Well what a day! Breakfast was great. Cereal with canned peaches, yogurt, rolls with ham or cheese, tea or coffee. Plenty to eat. Our bus is huge. It has two doorways and you have to climb 5 steps to reach the floor. Consequently you ride very high and can see really well. We were all given little devices to hang around our necks with ear phones, so our guide could talk to us without shouting. It was a 15 minute ride to the Vatican and even at this early hour there were swarms of people & tour groups. We were going to see the Vatican museum, library and the Sistine Chapel as an optional tour. As a regular group we had immediate entry - no standing for ages in the hot sun. We had to go through metal detectors and this is we're our morning went off the rails. We got held up by people in front and we could hear our guide saying " have we got everybody?" and then there was silence. We couldn't yell out NO, so when we got through we searched for the guide or anyone of the 6 people we could recognize, but to no avail. Where had they disappeared to so quickly? We thought we had no other choice but to try to catch up with them. So we climbed up a marble staircase as this seemed the only way forward. There we had to go though a turnstile using tickets but we explained that our group was ahead and we were trying to catch up, so he waved us through. They weren't there. So we asked a guard what was the usual route tours took. He pointed straight ahead and then left. Of we went walking through many beautiful corridors and eventually ending up at the Sistine Chapel. There we met another lady from a Trafalgar tour who had lost her group when she had to go to the loo. The guard was stern and said we could not enter without our group but we persisted we were lost and eventually he waved us through. Just a couple of guards inside. I quickly took a couple of photos. Instantly I had a guard at my shoulder saying “no camera will take away”.  I quickly said so sorry, l did not know. Thankfully he walked away. We agreed that they couldn't possibly have been though the museum in half an hour so our only option was to wait there for them as we had no idea where the bus pick up was. So we waited about an hour, in this wonderful chapel painted by Michelango between 1508 and 1512. Then people started coming in rapidly. We saw the Trafalgar lady had found her tour and eventually Edie recognized some Canadians we had had breakfast with. Hooray!!!! To cut a long story short, we found out that our group had been split in two and that we were missed when 2 tickets were left over. They had wasted 20 minutes waiting for us to turn up. The guides were not happy and were amazed that we had got so far without having a ticket. Guess we are now on a black list so will have to watch our P & Q's from now on. Both groups moved onto St Peters Basilica - the Popes Church  which is the largest church in the world, before moving out to the Square. It was packed with seats,and we were told thousands of people would join the Pope from 6.00 for an all night prayer session praying for world peace. We then had half an hour to visit the Vatican gift shop, go to the loo and get something to eat & drink. As the guide said " If you see a loo in Italy, use it, as you never know where you will find the next one". We then went into a huge underground parking area full to overflowing with tourist buses. Incredible.