On our last day in Rome we went to see St Peter's Basilica. We had heard a lot of horror stories about queueing for hours (and had seen thousands of people there Wednesday when we went to the Vatican museum) so we went pretty early in the morning. To our extreme surprise we just walked straight in as the place was almost deserted!
It is indeed an amazing building and it is very much a working church. What can I say - it is Roman Catholic, iconic, immense and overwhelming. We went up to the top of the Basilica to see the dome better and to walk around the top of the building. The photo below is a black and white rework of the top of St Peter's.
In the evening, after a pleasant meal at one of about two thousand restaurants within a kilometre of our apartment (!), we attended a free concert in a cathedral nearby. We had seen the notice for it two or three days prior and thought it might be worthwhile. It turned out to be part of the International Festival of Sacred Music and featured a sixty voice German male choir! The organist started with a Bach cantata and then the choir sang. It was a real highlight and I wished my father could have been there with us as he would have been absolutely thrilled.
The next morning we got a taxi to the central station and took the train via Florence to Lucca, where we lugged our cases for about a kilometre and a half to our guesthouse. We were very glad to get there.
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