UK and Med Cruise - Day 22 - 26 September - Rome - Vatican

And another early start - this time for a tour called "Sistine Chapel, Vatican Museums and St Peter's Basilica"
All I can say is, wow.
The tour company (the same one from yesterday's tour; different guide though) gets an early entry into the Vatican for this tour, and some special/quicker ways to move around.  I don't know quite how to explain how crowded it was - we at least didn't have to wait in line to enter (at one point we saw the lines and the guide said their waiting time would be in hours!), but it was amazingly busy.  However, our guide was really good, he managed to tell us a lot of detail without at all being boring or overwhelming, he had answers to every question he was asked, and he managed to manoeuvre a group of 20-odd people through the busiest crowds without losing us, all while explaining what we were seeing. I was just so impressed.
Everyone has seen many pictures of the Vatican and related places, so I'm not going to post any of them.  However, this one came as a surprise to me - in the Vatican Museums, an entire gallery done by one monk who drew maps of the entirety of Italy.  Amazing how he managed these birds eye views so many years before a birds eye view was something a human could do - this is just Sicily and Sardinia:

We had a different sort of Rome experience on the way back from the tour.  We went to catch the Metro, and it was obvious that there was a delay - there was a breakdown on the line, not in the section we were travelling on but further out.  However, it took quite some time for a train to arrive and when it did, it was already crowded.  By the time people got on at our station and the next, we were packed like sardines.  And, we kept being packed in further - I simply could not believe that so many people could fit into one Metro carriage.
Later in the day, after a rest and recuperate session, we decided to walk to the Trevi Fountain which is only about 1.3 kilometres from our hotel.  We could have cut down the distance by catching the Metro, but I didn't think I could face another sardine session.  We found it without too much trouble, although I have to say that without the smartphone and the Map app, we would have had some problems - modern technology is really helpful sometimes.  Of course, at the same time as we found it, approximately a million other tourists found it too, so there was no chance to get anywhere near enough to toss a coin.  However, we did get a really good look at it and I was amazed- I simply had no idea how huge it is.