BigWeather's Blog

We awoke shortly past 6:30a and got our showers and headed up to the top floor for our included breakfast.  Quite a nice view and the weather was shaping up to be much nicer than Thursday’s.  While I had given Addison a heads-up that there likely wouldn’t be bacon and eggs as it was a Continental breakfast — and he actually listened this time! — we were pleasantly surprised to have both bacon and eggs as well as cereal, croissants, and some cakes (lemon poppy seed, lemon, etc.).  Quite good and a great start to the day.

Headed downstairs and hired a cab to the Vatican as we wanted to be sure to make our 9a ticket time for the Vatican Museum including Sistine Chapel.  The cabby didn’t speak much English so, unlike our trip in to town yesterday, I kept my mouth shut and just enjoyed the ride through the city.  I loved seeing the narrow side streets, the frequent tiny plazas each with their own character, occasional peeks at Roman ruins or other grand but small churches, and people watching as they headed to work, school, and in the case of a group of nuns, church.

Shortly after crossing the Tiber (with a nice view of the second century Castel Sant’Angelo perched on its banks) we arrived at the Vatican.  And by arrived I mean at the head of a long pedestrian avenue leading to St. Peter’s basilica, obelisk in front.  It was a fairly pleasant walk though being stopped every few hundred yards by tour guides offering (at first) genuinely helpful advice before (every.single.time) launching into their sales pitch got a little old.  Still, it’s their living and we were in a major tourist area so to be expected.  Headed into the square, turned right and went a bit before turning left at the second stop light, hugging the Vatican’s walls to our left.

Eventually arrived at the entrance to the Vatican Museum and skipped the line that was forming as we’d bought our tickets online (note to anyone that may go in the future — buy your tickets online!).  Turned in our online tickets for official ones and headed up what must be the longest escalator I’ve ever ridden on.  We picked up a map that looked like a very complex flow chart and set out exploring the museum.

To say that the museum is vast is an understatement.  It consists of 1,400 rooms, grouped into categories ranging from ancient Egyptian and Near Eastern art all the way to modern art.  Many of the rooms are full to the brim with objects though some are sparser.  As the buildings hosting the art once served as papal offices and residences many of them have amazing wall and ceiling decor.  I’m a little unsure as to how to describe our visit as I took hundreds of pictures and there were so many objects and decor — I’ll distill it down to the essentials.

The first area was mainly Greek and Roman statuary, mosaics, and sarcophagi.  There were several long halls of just statue after statue.  Next we saw the Egyptian and Near East collection that included not only statues but also everyday items as well as sarcophagi and a mummy and attendant canopic jars (vessels that held the removed organs during the mummification process).  Also particularly cool was a letter written in cuneiform on clay tucked within a clay envelope.

 

Next came an immense hall with massive tapestries from the 1500s or so.  They weren’t as vibrant as they once were I’m sure but nonetheless impressive.  Shortly beyond that was my favorite hall — Galleria delle carte geografiche, the hall of maps dating from 1580.  Painted on the walls were floor to ceiling maps of each region of Italy showing all the towns, churches, roads, terrain, etc.  I took loads of photos and lingered there as long as possible.  The detail was amazing and the little touches like sea monsters and inset maps for cities were very cool.

Following that came the four Raphael Rooms, decorated by Raphael from 1508 or so until his death in 1520, his assistants finishing the final room thereafter.  The colors are so vibrant and the scenes depicted are brought to life.  It’s extraordinary.

After the Raphael Rooms we saw the Borgia Apartments containing art a bit older from 1492 to 1494 and including the first European depiction of a Native American.  What’s interesting is that such sinful depravity (at least by papal standards) occurred in the apartments that succeeding popes did not wish to live nor work in them and instead build new apartments.  Another really neat thing about the Borgia Apartments was the elaborate depiction of real objects meant to fool the eye like statuary, alcoves, etc.

While I’m not a huge fan of most contemporary art there were a few (relatively) recent works that I enjoyed seeing by folks such as Vincent Van Gogh and Salvador Dali.  After that we got some water and Addison a Coke and went to the restroom before going into the main event, the Sistine Chapel.

Wow!  It is something to behold.  Not a small room by any means, the entire chapel is covered from floor to ceiling (and of course the ceilings themselves) by amazing art by Michelangelo (and some prior murals done a couple of decades earlier that are no slouch either!).  Even with a throng of tourists packed into the chapel and the guards amusingly announcing over the PA system “No photograph.  Be quiet.  Shhhhhhh!” quite loudly the impact is not lessened.  The three of us took some time and sat on the benches found on the perimeter.  Of course The Creation of Adam, depicting God creating Mankind (the fingers touching painting) is impressive, as is the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Eden.  Both form part of the ceiling, painted between 1508 and 1512.  What really struck me, however, was The Last Judgment, painted much later between 1535 and 1541.  An amazing work of art covering an entire end of the room.  The whole affair is just amazing, an incredible act of devotion — 10 years spent in this one room by one of the best artists this world has ever seen.  4 years on scaffolding 50+ feet above the floor, lying on his back and painting the ceiling panels.

Reluctantly left the Sistine Chapel and move on through an immensely long series of halls (I swear I could see the curvature of the Earth — OK, maybe not that long, but about 1km total) containing early Christian objects like glassware, oil lamps, etc. as well as early globes and maps.

Before exiting the Vatican Museums we ate at the cafe and had some (surprisingly reasonably priced) pieces of pizza and a salami sandwich.  Addison didn’t care for his pizza but Michelle and I were quite content.  We also went through the Vatican City stamp and coin museums and a wing devoted to objects from other religions from around the world that was really interesting.  There was also a closed off wing of Roman statuary that happened to contain the famous statue of the Emporer Augustus.  Thankfully it was fairly visible to all.

Walked the 2km back to the Piazza San Pietro expecting a long (three hours plus) wait to get into St. Peter’s Basilica.  Boy did we luck out, no line other than the security checkpoint.  Siesta time tourism for the win!  Also enjoyed watching the basilica’s fashion police turn away men in shorts and women in less than knee-length skirts or bare shoulders.

Before entering the basilica we were fortunate to catch the changing of the Swiss Guard, the Vatican’s army (and smallest in the world, incidentally).  The brief ceremony had saluting and all that you’d expect.  Next we moved on into the basilica itself.

I’ll be honest here — I found St. Peter’s both overwhelming and underwhelming.  Overwhelming in it’s pure scope (in fact from the furthest length of the basilica inscribed on the ground are the lengths of all of the other cathedrals and where they end up in relation to the basilica (spoiler alert — they are all shorter).  It is massive — there are side churches and sanctuaries within the basilica itself.  The baldacchino, a towering 100 foot bronze structure that almost looks like a four poster bed seems out of place.  Gold lettering, multi-colored tile floors, copious sculpture — it was just a bit gaudy.  The overall effect was a bit underwhelming.  I guess I prefer the Yorkminsters and Notre Dames of the world — less gaudy and more stern and gray.

That said, I was still very glad we visited and a few things stood out.  The scale was impressive and the gold lettering was kind of cool.  A lady singing Ave Maria with a beautiful voice was touching (though it seemed to confuse the officials on site as to whether they should be shushing her or not).  A couple of pope’s tombs were also located in the basilica.  Finally, Michelangelo’s Pieta, even behind bullet proof glass, is amazing.

After the basilica I convinced Addison that we needed to climb to the top of the basilica’s dome.  It was a pretty brutal climb — over 500 steps and some of those were cheating — the walk four steps up a slight slope then a tiny step up kind.  After about 200 steps we came out on the roof of the basilica just under the dome and were able to catch some views of Rome and the basilica’s facade’s statuary.  As it was starting to spit rain we continued up into the dome.  The first part was impressive as we were standing above the apse and could look directly down into the basilica well over 100 feet below.

The climb thereafter was not fun — as it is climbing in a hollowed space along the shell of the dome the walls were not perpendicular to the stairs.  Very disorienting.  The final bit was a very narrow stone spiral staircase where we had to turn our large feet (13 and 15) sideways and cling to a rope in the center so as to not fall.

The view from the top was nice, but not as nice as I expected — mainly because Rome is not a city with skyscrapers and other easy to spot buildings as no building can exceed the height of the dome.  It was still neat, however, seeing the Altare della Patria, the Torre della Milizie, and other central Rome sights.

On the way back down we were held up by a college age lady texting on her phone while going down tricky spiral stairs.  Is it bad that I was kind of, OK really, hoping she’d fall?  Not get seriously hurt, mind you, just reminded that texting while descending ancient stairs is a bad idea.  Made it to the bottom in one piece, met back up with Michelle, and headed back out to the entrance to Vatican City where we caught a cab back into Rome.  We had intended to walk but, it being a bit past 5p and us all being tired, we decided to head back to the room for siesta.  Along the way honking erupted and the cabby explained that Italy had just beaten Sweden in Euro Cup ’16.

We aren’t really good at the whole siesta thing as we awoke at 9p.  Headed to the restaurant across the small courtyard from Hotel Bolivar named Ristorante Santa Cristina al Quirinale.  It had pretty charming decor.  I had pasta carbonara — pasta with bacon and egg — that was amazing.  Addison had filet mignon that he enjoyed with some roasted potatoes that were very delicious.  Michelle didn’t fare so well, however — she ordered prawns but they came out whole (those soulless black eyes looking at us!) and, while bigger than she expected, proved difficult to eat.  On top of that the apple pie she ordered for dessert had almonds (she doesn’t do nuts) though Addison’s chocolate cake was tasty.

Addison headed back to the room while Michelle and I grabbed some gelato (well, I did — she just had some hot tea) and watched Spain versus Turkey.  Then we walked down to see Trajan’s Column, Altare della Patria, and the forum lit up.  Headed back to the room just before midnight and she went to bed while I blogged until about 3a.