Grand Tour, Day 29: St. Peter's and Torino

On our last day in Rome, we went to St Peter’s Basilica. We thought we were going to have to wait a long time to get in, but we only had to wait for ten minutes. We got audio guides.

When you walk towards St. Peter's Basilica, you walk through a big plaza that is shaped in a semi-circle. There are colonnades on the sides of the plaza with statues of saints above them. Then when you go inside, you see a humongous room--called the nave--with small chapels on the sides.

One of the chapels has the Pieta inside of it. That is the first chapel we saw. I don't know how Michelangelo made the folds in Mary's cloak look so lifelike.

In the basilica, you can also see St Peter’s tomb. Above the tomb, you see something that looks like an arc. It has four black pillars and a roof over it. On top of the roof, you see a lot of angels. One of the angels looks like it is hanging in mid-air! The angels were made out of bronze. Above the roof, there is a dome, and you can see the sun shining through a lot of glass windows. It is beautiful.

On the wall of one of the rooms, there was a list of popes since St Peter, and how long they served. There was a big gap between Victor I, who became pope in 199, and Leo I, who became pope in 461.

In a different room, we also saw a replica of the Transfiguration by Raphael.

Once we left, we went to get some money from our account at a bank there. Then we went to eat lunch. I got pizza. Then we walked to the train station. We got on our train to Torino. For 5 hours I read, played on my mom’s phone, and played cards.

Once we got to Torino, it was already six o-clock. We went and checked in to our hotel. We rode up the elevator, and we had to go to the bathroom, so we got out quickly. A lady from the desk came and asked us if we closed the elevator door. We hadn't, so she got mad at us, even though we didn't know that we had to close the door. I did not like that lady.

After we got chewed out, we went to the bathroom, went to our room, and stayed there while my mom went to look for a place for us to eat dinner. She found a place, and we went there.

I got really good pizza.

Then we went and got ice cream. I got frutti di bosco and strawberry. I had not even eaten a quarter of it, and then it fell off. I was sad the whole way home.

Here is a list of my favorite things I did today:
1. Train
2. St Peter’s Basilica
3. Hotel