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July 20, 2007— in Roma

We started the day heading to the Vatican museum Luigi knew the lines tend to be long, so we got there at 8:00 a.m. for the doors to open at 9a.m. (or so). We waited for about an hour and then Luigi waved us to move ahead (you might use the word "cut") of the other people in front of us. Turns out Luigi was chatting with some white-shirted administrator inside while we were waiting, telling him there was a boys choir, a bunch of kids outside waiting to get in. The man went upstairs, got us tickets and waved us ahead in exchange for a song. So we go through security, and the guy asks us to sing in the entrance hall. "Very good acoustics" he tells me. Everything is marble, after all. So we start singing Denn er hat with Mr. Kula conducting. Two uniformed security guards race over, and I tell them the other man asked us to sing something, and a third security guard who seemingly outranked the other two, put a stop to it by yelling at the choir and Mr. Kula to stop in the middle of the song, which I thought was actually sounding good at 9am with no warmup. The white-shirted man then started arguing with the security guards, and while they argued about who had the right to ask us to sing in the entry hall, we got our headsets and wandered into the museum. The white-shirted man did thank us and so we got to go in first for half a song.

Inside, we saw the many treasures of the Vatican Museum, sculptures, paintings, mosaics, and of course the Sistine Chapel. We stopped by a fountain to refill water bottles, went through the crypt, and then headed into the basilica for our first glimpse inside. After a brief tour inside, we headed to the Trevi Fountain for sightseeing and lunch. We walked from trevi to the Pantheon and Piazza Navona, trying the gelato along the way. It was best at a place just outside the Pantheon we thought.

Sir Collin has prepared some more vignettes from the tour:

Mrs. Weimer buys a 2008 calendar

Kerry entertains us at dinner at Castelbrando

A violinist entertains us in Verona

In line for the Vatican Museum	With our guide Gloria
Sculpture gallery	Lots of mosaics
Cool room	Cool ceiling
You can drink from the fountains in Rome	Inside St.Peters
Cool ceiling	There's a statue of St. Peter where you can touch his foot for good luck
out front	Everybody out front
Pizza!	Gelato!
Mr. Tarango cuts address labels to send postcards to Cantori and Intermezzi	Carey at the Trevi Fountain
Gelato!	Jacob at the Pantheon
Gelato!	Gelato!
Luigi and Flavio