Friday 7am(! This is supposed to be a holiday) Arise, breakfast and discuss battle plan. Bride's Roman priority is St Peter's basilica and the Vatican, although we've kept quiet that it opened at 7.30. Everyone seems happy with the plan, and the question goes out as to which other landmarks should be viewed. Bride berates me for wanting to see the Keats-Shelley Museum ("I've not come to Rome to go somewhere somebody died"...I didn't bother to start with what was wrong with that). At 9.00 we go underground. At 9.30 we are in the queue for the museums, and it is already hotter than I like. Aha, you cry, but you'll be inside in the shade! Indeed that is true...only crammed in with around 7,000,000 other people, being herded through like sheep. Not much cooler. 10.00 We enter the museum proper. Now, you can't be crafty and go for a couple of Raphael rooms and the Sistine chapel. Oh no. There's a structure to these things. Every so often there's a sign pointing out Cappella Sistina through an ominous-looking door...but it's generally another lavishly decorated room or corridor full of Croatians (or another group led by the auspicious 'Trumpy Tours'). Don't get me wrong. Everything was gorgeous. I've seen more beautiful ceilings than I could have hoped for. It's just...a little like overkill. You can get gildinged-out, poped-out, sainted-out. Best bits on the way round - Egyptian artefacts, colossal statues of ancient gods, the Raphael rooms and the tiny Chapel of St Nicholas painted by Fra Angelico (I think a lot of people miss this). We take the slightly longer but much quieter detour through the Borgia Apartments, which is a collection of modern religious art. A lot of which is, shall we say, mediocre to rubbish; some of which is scary, and not in a good way. But we spot some Picasso ceramics and a couple of Dalis (tick-offs for the Bride and others), although the best bit is in another side room, which we are alone in and which houses a Van Gogh. Not only a Van Gogh, but one none of us has ever even heard of before - a pieta (the scene of Mary holding Jesus after he's brought down from the cross) with Vincent himself as Jesus. Another tick-off for the bride, and we get amazingly close without a curator breathing down our necks. 12.00 Exhausted, we find a sneaky terrace coffee bar just before the Sistine Chapel (yet another hidden gem) before facing one of the most famous pieces of art/examples of back-breaking dedication in the world. And despite the enormous volume of beautiful things my brain has already absorbed this morning, it still takes my breath away. As well as giving me a crick in the neck. For me, we weren't in there long enough (I could have stood beneath the spark of wisdom being imparted for hours) but duty (the Bride) called. More corridors just to get out.... looking at the guidebook, I see we've missed more than half the top ten pieces and walked round less than half the museum. But, enough is enough now. To St Peter's! En route we are accosted by some beggar-pickpockets armed with babies, but thankfully we're all on alert and shoo them away.1pm St Peter's basilica. Impressive is the word, but although the Bride loves it (she gets misty-eyed and seems to be contemplating taking the veil) it leaves me and some of the others cold. Yes, it's all done to huge scale, but it seems to be more a monument to Popes gone by than a house of God. It doesn't feel like a place of worship; it feels like an ornate shell. A lady in a hat hails me."Do you speak English?" she asks in an American accent. Me: "Yes"She:"Can you tell me where to look for the Michaelangelo painting?"Me: confusedly "...Painting? by Michaelangelo?"She: impatiently, obviously she has chosen to ask a fool "Yes, the Michaelangelo"Me: thinks, she's said painting by accident, she means the Pieta statue (one of the only truly beautiful rather than imposing items in there) "Oh, the Pieta! The statue - it's in that first chapel,
