Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Vatican City

The next port was Civitavecchia, which is about an hour train ride from Rome. We walked to the station, bought round trip tickets to Rome and caught the train just in time without having to wait for the next scheduled departure. We got off the train at St. Peter’s station and made the Vatican our first stop. We figured following a nun was a pretty good indicator that we were walking in the correct direction.
From reading in the daily informational booklet provided by the cruise ship, we learned that Vatican City is actually its own country.  Where else can you see an entire country from one spot?  Here's a 360 degree view of the country!
This was news to both of us and gave us an extra country to add to the mental list we had been creating of countries that we had visited. I’m up to 12 and Steven is close behind at 10. This trip added seven to the list: France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Spain, Monaco, and Vatican City; plus we visited the Bahamas in March so that is eight countries for this year. Once inside Vatican City we walked around and tried to figure out what each building actually was.  We knew what was there, but had to do some asking around before we figured out what was what.
There is a large section of chairs setup in the center of the city where the Pope addresses the public every Tuesday.

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