The Vatican

TOP: St Peter's Square

2nd: St Peter's Basilica fresco

3rd: Pope (Paul) under glass

4th: Fighting his way out of hell

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The Vatican was probably the one place that I was most interested in visiting. Even though I had problems with it from a religious and moral standpoint, it truly is one of the great storehouses of mankind's treasures. We spent an entire day there; we probably could have spent a week and still just touched the surface.

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My favorite vatican story....Some pope decides that he can't have any nude statues in the vatican, so he hires a sculpture to put fig leaves on every statue in the place...something like, oh, 10,000 or so. After a year of work, there's still something like 9,000 to go, even though the guy has been busting his butt. So, the pope grabs a hammer and chisel, and proceeds to walk through the vatican for days on end chiseling off the "manhood" of every statue in the place. SOMEBODY had a little problem there, eh! Then the guide tells us, "And the best thing is that they NEVER throw anything out around here...". We pee'd ourselves laughing.

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Of all the places we visited on this trip, this is the one that is on my "Must return" list. I can't recommend it highly enough to everyone.

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Pope Lumpy IX out