Today was the day we would visit the Vatican museum and the St. Peter church. For the first time we took the metro to get us there. This was an experience we never had before. In short, the subway is a big mess (it all looked like it was still under construction, loose wires, unsafe footing) and we never take a metro again if we do not have to. When we arrived at the station we were soon harassed by many people who offered us tickets (with and without tours) so we could "skip the line". We did not see the line yet, but soon discovered it was a big line indeed, but we planned all day for this, so we de decided we stay in line for a ticket instead of the very expensive tickets the "tour guides" offered. We had to wait for around 1 hour and 30 minutes, before we could finally go inside (after a bag & body scan) where we bought our tickets. The whole Vatican museum was very interesting. Especially the strange brass globe that sometimes rotated by itself. This 'construction' is one of several across the world that, together, present an unsolved mystery. Of course there was much art from other countries as well, the biggest collection was a whole bunch of mostly Greek and Greek influenced statues. There were a lot of nice decorations and paintings on the walls that were far more interesting though. It took us a few hours to see it all and finally arrive at the Sixtine chapel that was the highlight of the whole museum. It was really a pity we could not take any pictures there because it was forbidden... Does not mean we didn't try though, but the results were blurry. We found ourself outside the museum soon and continued our way to St. Peter where we wanted to climb up to the dome for a nice view over Rome. We went up with the stairs and survived! There was an option to do a part of the climb with a lift but it was only an advantage of 230 steps so we took the ticket for "stairs only". There were 551 steps in total but they did not count the steep passages which had no stairs. When we arrived a the dome-part you could look down to the floor level, where a mass was in process. There was a big fence to prevent people from throwing things down, but it also prevented us from taking good pictures. We continued our way up to get on top of the church. To get on top was a great challenge but the result was amazing! The view was really great, you could see all over Rome, even the mountains surrounding the city! It was the best view we had until now. When we took our pictures we went down and half-way we found a nice little gift-shop run by nuns who had nice items for sale. When we were finished browsing we continued our way down. The passage ended in St. Peter itself. This church is very big and very beautiful (thrice as high as the Colosseum). There were enormous statues spread all over the church with hidden surprises everywhere. Our favourite was a statue by Michelangelo of Maria holding Jesus. It was well protected but we managed to take a picture. After, we went to the square to get our final look in the last rays of the sun.