Roseyland

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Welcome to day number 2 of the Roseyland Italian adventure. You have of course read day 1 already, if not, use the link above and go read it. Do not read day 2 without reading day 1, just don’t. Today is our first full day in Rome and there is only one item on the agenda. Touring the Vatican. Before we left, my aunt and uncle (who had just been to Rome) convinced us that we had to take a Context Travel tour of the Vatican. I had always planned to take a tour of the Vatican, but I was planning on taking one of the larger group tours. The Context tours seemed a little expensive and overly academic to me. I’m so glad I changed my mind. Context tours have a maximum of 6 people on their tours, and your guide knows everything about the Vatican, and I mean everything. It’s like strolling through the Vatican with your good professor friend that loves to answer questions. The larger group tours would be okay, but they are groups of around 30 people, and that wouldn’t be so bad, but there are like 30 groups of 30 people all trying to shuffle their people from place to place while they recite their script. I’m probably being a little too hard on the larger group tours, but the Context tour really was excellent. If you spent all that money to go all the way to Rome, spend a little more on the Context tour, and no, I’m not getting compensated in any way to say this. In case you are wondering, we took the Arte Vaticana (with Reservation) tour.

We met our guide in a bar (think coffee bar) just outside the Vatican museums entrance. There were three other people on our tour, a husband, wife, and son from Massachusetts (I think). They were nice. The husband liked to take lots of pictures, like me. I wonder if he has a blog. Anyways, we entered the Vatican and our guide gave us a good overview of the Vatican and it’s history. The we walked out on this terrace that was absolutely beautiful. It overlooked the Vatican gardens and you could see the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica in the background. You can’t tell from the picture, but that dome is huge, and by huge, I mean really really big.

Here is a picture from a courtyard inside the Vatican Museums. See that sphere in the middle? That sphere used to sit right between the World Trade Center towers. I don’t remember the story, but somehow it survived 9/11 and now it lives at the Vatican.

The Vatican museums are filled with priceless art. This statue is apparently very famous. Of course I don’t remember it’s name, but I believe it was an ancient greek statue had been lost for hundreds of years but was still well known among ancient Roman artist. Then it was unearthed and people flocked to see it. I probably butchered that story, but the point is, this statue is kind of a big deal. He should probably be wearing sunglasses.

Here is a hallway in the Vatican museums. Very beautiful building, lots of people.

Ohhhh. This is one of my favorite parts. This is a Vatican parking lot. This is where people who work at the Vatican park. See anything unusual? There is a big yellow Hummer in the parking lot. Who at the Vatican drives a Hummer?!? Doesn’t that break a vow or two? And don’t say, “I bet it’s the Pope’s!”. That joke is far to easy to be funny.

This is the School of Athens by Raphael. I had just finished reading Michelangelo and the Pope’s Ceiling by Ross King, which talked all about the painting of the Sistine Chapel and the rivalry between Michelangelo and Raphael. The book also talked about Raphael’s paintings in the Papal apartments, and they sounded very cool, but I didn’t think I’d get to see them, because I figured the Pope still lived there. Turns out he moved a while back, and you can go see them. Hurray! I actually liked this painting more that the Sistine Chapel ceiling, but that might just be because you can get closer to it.

Here is the famous Sistine chapel ceiling. The picture is a little blurry, because you aren’t supposed to take pictures and I had to be all sneaky. The whole thing is kind of ridiculous. There were a few hundred people in the Chapel, half of whom are taking picture after picture and then the guards in thick Italian accents say, “No Phoooto… No Veedeo…”. On top of that, supposedly the only reason you can’t take pictures of the ceiling is because the images are copyrighted by the Japanese company NHK who funded the restoration of the ceiling, and supposedly that copyright has run out, so you can take pictures of the ceiling. It’s just that nobody has told the guards.

This is the official staircase of the Vatican. It’s what heads of state use when they visit and it leads up to the Sistine chapel.

This is the inside of St. Peter’s basilica. This building is huge, it’s as long as two football fields and ridiculously beautiful.

This is the alter of St. Peter’s basilica which sits directly under it’s massive dome.

Here is picture from St. Peter’s square in front of St. Peter’s basilica. See the building in the background with all the windows? The three right most windows on the top row are where the Pope lives and works.

Another shot of St. Peter’s square, this time with St. Peter’s basilica in the background.

Our tour concluded in St. Peter’s square, and just to mention it one more time, it was awesome. I learned so much that I could probably pretend to be catholic now. Our guide mention a couple things on our tour that were not about the Vatican, but have stuck with me. First he talked about the difference between the cultures of northern and southern Europe. Basically he said that the germanic cultures (Germany, the Netherlands, The UK, etc…) tend to be very orderly and structured cultures. On the other hand, the romance language countries (France, Spain, Italy, etc…) tend to be more chaotic and less structured. I think I experienced this last year when I went from London to Paris. I really liked London and I felt very comfortable there almost instantly. Paris on the other hand was a shock to my system. While I loved Paris, it felt very out of control to me. At the time I chalked this up to not understanding the language, but now I think it’s a deeper cultural issue too. Supposedly the U.S. is more like the germanic countries. I’ll have to test this theory with a trip to Germany. Rome was chaotic like Paris, but the people were friendlier, so it didn’t shock me as much. Either that or I’m just more used to it now.

The other thing our guide said that has stuck with me is that the European cultures are at serious risk of going extinct. The birth rates in most European countries are around 1.8 births per woman. 2.1 births per woman is the rate needed to maintain a population. On top of that, immigrant cultures in Europe have much higher birth rates and could over take the native cultures in a generation or two. This worries me, because the European people are wonderful, and I don’t want them to disappear. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against the immigrant cultures, without them, Europe would be in even worse shape. Still, I hope traditional Europe is around for many generations to come, or at least for the rest of my lifetime. I did some research, and birth rates in Europe are increasing, so it looks like the trend is slowly reversing. It seems like an easy problem to fix. I mean Rome is filled with attractive young European women, how hard can it be to get them all pregnant? If by chance you are a European woman reading this right now, stop, go get pregnant, then come back and read the rest. Thanks.

After our vatican tour, we ate lunch and then headed back to St. Peter’s basilica to climb the dome. Unfortunaly, we had to wait in the security line, but it’s much shorter in the afternoon. Here is a picture of part of the staircase heading to the top of the dome.

Here is a picture of St. Peter’s square from the top of the dome with Rome in the background.

Here is a picture of the back part of the Vatican. Visitors aren’t allowed to go there, it’s where they have secret Pope meetings.

Here is the platform on top of the dome and all the people taking pictures.

After the climbing down from the dome, we walked to the Torre Argentina cat sanctuary. There are lots of stray cat’s in Rome. Something about italians not believing in sterilizing their cats. The Torre Argentina sanctuary has a little section of ancient ruins where the cats can live, and the sanctuary gives them food, water, and shots. The people that work in the sanctuary are wonderful wonderful people. You should go to the link above and donate. The cat below is Earl’s italian cousin. While all the other cats were sleeping, he was running and jumping from ledge to ledge. It was actually really hard to get this picture.

Here are more cats among the ruins.

The cat sanctuary is pretty close to the Pantheon, so we headed there next to see the inside this time. The Pantheon is (I think) the only ancient Roman building that has survived all this time in pretty much it’s original condition. At some point it was converted into a catholic church. Here is the inside.

Remember that great restaurant in front of the Pantheon that I talked about last time. Here is a view from our table, that’s my glass of red wine. I don’t know why, but wine tasted so much better in Italy. Maybe it was the atmosphere, but it seems like they serve it at the perfect temperature, or decanted it, or something. It was good, I wish I knew why.

Day 2 is now concluded. Tomorrow we travel by train to Florence. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.