Christmas Day

On Christmas Day we visited The Vatican.  Vatican City is its own country with its own flag but with only 800 residents including the Pope.  Pope Francis refused to live in a fancy palace and instead chose to live in a simple apartment.  He also used to ride a Harley and catches public transport - we think he is pretty cool!  St Peters cathedral is enormous with lots of sections that contain many of the previous popes in coffins made of glass, marble and precious metals.  You could see the popes in the glass coffins they either had wax or bronze layers on their faces which helped to preserve them.  

The ceiling had beautiful paintings all over it with real gold and silver leaf, there were lots of murals and statues on the walls and floor was made different marbles.  There were people singing and a mass being held, the voices sounded graceful.

 There was an amazing nativity scene in St Peters that had moving animals and people, water flowing down a little stream, stars in the sky and a barn with baby Jesus, Mary and Joseph and the three wise men.    The Pope puts baby Jesus in the manger at the Christmas Eve mass and then he puts another baby Jesus in the huge nativity scene in St Peter's square.

 We had Chistmas lunch in a restaurant just outside of Vatican City which was very nice but it was very busy.  Mum and Hannah had an antipasto platter each, dad and Drew had a fillet steak and veal in lemon sauce.    We had Fanta to drink and suprisingly it was pale yellow not bright orange!  Merry Christmas!!!

Drew and Hannah