  My trip began in Rome, and as a nominal Catholic I spent the great bulk of my time in and around the Vatican.
It was incredible. St. Peter's Basilica, as you may know, is roughly three times taller than the Statue of Liberty. It is the largest church in the world. Click on any of these photos to enlarge them. urlLink This is the view from the alleyway next to the apartment in Rome... one can see the Dome of St. Peters in the distance. urlLink The courtyard outside of St. Peter's during the Pope's weekly address. Now, most of the photos I took with my Olympus Camedia 1.3 megapixel no-zoom camera.
Thus the suckage. It was simply not versatile enough to do much in the basilica's immense interior. That did not, unfortunately, prevent me from trying. urlLink A crooked ass shot of Bernini's famous altar piece. Looking at these shots, I see that they cannot convey the IMMENSITY of this place. It was huge. I experienced sensory overload... I couldn't keep gasping "ooh ahh" at every square inch of the place, so I was forced to accept it.
urlLink A shot of the Dome from the ground level...its height is deceptive since everything was built to scale... urlLink A random shot of the interior. urlLink A little bit of the old sculpture... For the hale pilgrim, there is an option to climb to the top of the dome. An elevator takes you halfway up, where you can then go out onto the cupola and look down. urlLink A beautiful shot of a mass from the cupola of the dome.
The letters you see across the top were six and a half feet tall... You take stairs the rest of the way up... 367 of them. They get so narrow and steep that you pull yourself the last few yards by rope. The resulting view is worth it, though. urlLink A shot of the square from the tip-top of the dome. Note the Egyptian obliesk. More to come... 
