Cappella Sistina...Sistine Chapel

Where do I start? Well...I saw it! This little ol' art teacher from Texas traveled a long way to see it! I was soooooo excited in the moments leading up to actually going into the chapel. I did not know how we would enter it and imagined it as a building separate from the Vatican Museum. To see the Sistine Chapel, you must first go through the Vatican Museum. This museum is grand and wonderful, as you can tell from the pictures I already posted, but is a long walk and maze through many different rooms and buildings....all connected. Every room leads to another room with spectacular pieces of art and artifacts. The signs kept teasing us..."this way to Cappella Sistina." Well, room after room, Raphael's "School of Athens", pope's apartments, mummies, tapestries, statues, etc., etc. and I began to think it would never happen until I stepped into what I thought was just another room of the same and BAM! we were in the Sistine Chapel! No glorious entrance, no warning. I just stepped in, looked around and immediately knew where I was. My heart raced, though I was disappointed I had not prepared myself for this moment since there was no singing angels or trumpets (hee hee)....very anti-climatic, but seeing Michelangelo's works with my own eyes made up for it. You cannot take photos in the Chapel, so the first picture above is when I exited the chapel and the second is the long staircase leading away from it. The third picture shows the wall outside the chapel and in the fourth you can see a sliver of it through a grand archway from St. Peter's Basilica. The fountain was just outside the chapel. There are many fountains (not as fancy...it is the Vatican you know) for the public to drink out of all over Rome. The water is ice cold. Just so you are not disappointed....I did however video the ceiling a bit. The guards inside saw many people still taking pictures, but did not take away the camera. They just said "no photos." I did not get caught using my flip camera. This is what I saw and now you can too......