Under My Umbrella, ella ella ay ay ay ay. Oo baby its raining.

We were surprisingly ready for our 7:15 am pick up to the Vatican. Unfortunately it has been raining cats and dogs since Monica stepped off her flight in Rome (she brought the London curse here with her...and I fully blame her) and we thought we were going to have to wait in the unfriendly line of brightly filled umbrella's, fortunately Mama I. planned a guided tour or else we would have been doomed. Right when we got out of the car, Mossimio, the rat faced, long shnozed tour guide with stallion grey hair, greeted us on the other side of the Vatican. Monica the besty of bests thought that he was someone trying to get her to come inside his restaurant and she boulted from him as he tried to gather us together to tell us that we had time to grab coffee before the Vatican opened. We were too early for the hotel breakfast, so we were lucky that we could sip on a cappuccino and munch a croissant before our tour. Mossimo had us meet him at the front of the line at 10 till 8. At 7:57 we were the first ones walking into the Vatican museum. At 7:59 we were waiting at the gates inside the museum until the clock struck 8 and the machines registered that it was time for another day of tourists. Mossimo, the worlds fastest and most efficient walker and talker took us straight into the Sistine chapel. We were the only people (minus the guards) in the chapel for a good 15 to 20 minutes. Ironically the next tour group to walk in was the Miller family from Kansas City who just happened to be my cousin's best friend from high school's family. Angela is studying in Spain and was meeting her family in Rome just like me. A small world we live in. Mossimo took us through the history of Michelangelo's two part painting masterpiece. After many hours of Dolby's art history lessons, I not only found Mossimo to be 10 thousand times easier to listen to but I truly felt that I had an even better understanding of the work, and my knowledge of Michelangelo previous work helped to put this in context. I am ashamed to mention this because I feel that everyone who has already been to Rome said that their "wowza" experience happened inside the Sistine chapel, however I imagined the chapel to be much different than it was for some reason. Possibly bigger and brighter and for some reason more gold. Mossimio explained that the chapel was recently cleaned (recently for Italians is anything in the past 100 years) in 1994 and before then, the walls were probably four or five shades darker due to the soot that collected on the walls from the candles they used to burn in the chapel. We were also given the golden ticket to take a few pictures in the chapel. Most people are not given this opportunity. Mossimio captured some of the Isenberg's finest photo's. After the chapel, we toured the Vatican's entire collection of art work, statues, carpets, jewelry, maps and paintings. The Pope is a powerful man, he knows how to work his money. Mossimio had done his pope-work, and he was the man of all stories and answers. He even pulled out his duel packed cell-phone camera numerous times to give us a comparison of different paintings and zoomed in details that we couldn't see from where we were. I hadn't realized how much time we had been there until Monica's ADD started to kick her in the butt very hard, and when I looked at my clock it was already 11 o'clock and we hadn't even made it into the Basilica. We toured through the four rooms that Raphael was commissioned to do by the Pope and then finally made our way through the crowds to St. Petersburg. I can't even imagine the feeling people who are actually tied to this religion might feel upon entering this church but DAMN. I must say I have been to my fair share of churches and I think if I put them all together they would be about the same size as St. Petersburg. Unlike the first part of tour, the church was jam packed with every kind of tourist. Amy I. had met a record high for her questions and she was dying to go into the confessionals until Mama I. had to confess to her that we were Jewish and that we couldn't go in one. Mama I. must have been annoyed with her persistent questioning because she said it rather loud and Mossimo over heard...thats when he found out that we were Jewish. It was pretty unfortunate that the sky decided to rain all day because we were not able to tour around all Vatican city. Around 12:30 we headed over to the gift shop and Amy I. went crazy for the mosaics and we bought Aidan, Isabel and Bridget rosaries. We intended on going to the first Jewish Deli in Rome but it ended up not going to a Jewish deli at all, and I don't think they even had sandwiches at all. Papa I. and Little Adam I. headed to a rainy 3 o'clock football game and us girls decided that we would wander the street, possibly do some shopping. By the time we came home, it looked like we had just decided to take a group shower in our clothes, our shoes were filled and are hair matted wet to our heads. We were singing under our umbrella's ellas ellas ellas ay ay ay ay ay. The only way to protect us from any kind of sickness was naturally to get gelato. It cured all coldness and helped to keep my mind off the fact the entire bottom portion of my pants were soaked. We came back to the hotel stripped down and jumped in our pj's and then into bed for a warm power nap. For dinner we headed to a restaurant recommend by our tour guide Andre. I have yet to be unimpressed with this city and its food and we all split a variety of pastas, veggies and steaks. It was another enjoyable long dinner night. We just couldn't stop laughing! The only downfall to the diner were these invisible but visible enough fruit flies that swarmed our table. They didn't seem to bother anyone else but us, and sporadically one of us would try to smack them down. Our smacks and claps were not fast enough and Mama I. insisted that we ignore them because the tables around us were starting to stare. We headed back home and packed up. Last night of Isenberg reunion-ness, sad sad sad.