Rome - day 3

Warning - there are a TON of photos in this post.

Today is my tour of the Vatican! I woke up early and had another wonderful breakfast at my hotel and made my way the 3 blocks or so to the meeting point for my tour. My wonderful travel agent at Cherry Creek Travel, Betsy, helped me book the tour before I left the states and I'm so excited! My tour guide ended up being a young British girl named Fran who has lived in Rome for less than 6 months. She was very nice and knew A LOT about the Vatican. First we started a open area outside the Vatican museum.

Next we headed inside to the HUGE Vatican museum and what I thought was really amazing was that they had so many pagan statues and art in the Vatican. The reason is because the Pope who decided to start the museum (I don't remember which one) was really interested in ancient history and put a lot of that art in the museum.

One thing that was really funny is that Fran told us there was this one Pope (again, no clue which one) and he thought that all the private parts on the statues was obscene so he ordered that they all be knocked off of the statues and put somewhere else. So in her British accent Fran said “So there is a place down the street where all of the private bits of the statues stay” and it made me chuckle.

Another thing, even the floor was art sometimes!

As we made our way through the Vatican, it was just amazing how many pieces of art there are and it got me thinking “What are the really cool pieces of art that only select people in the Vatican get to see?” There was the amazing hall of maps where people in the past were amazingly accurate in the maps that they made of different parts of the world and Europe.

After the museum, we made our way into the Sistine Chapel which was amazing! I really appreciated that Fran took us to a photo of the layout and explained some interesting things about the ceiling painting that Michael Angelo did. First, the Pope basically forced him to do it even though he didn’t want to. Second, he started in the middle and painted everything too small. After coming down and examining his work, he decided to paint everything very huge so that everyone could see it from the floor. Next, it took him 4 years (I think) to finish the ceiling and maybe that had something to do with the fact that Michael Angelo was primarily a sculpture. There were not photos or talking allowed in the Sistine Chapel and I found it very interesting why there were no photos allowed. After years of dirt and grime accumulating in the Chapel, the Vatican needed it to be professionally cleaned. A Japanese company was selected to clean it and instead of payment, they were given exclusive photography rights in the Chapel. The guards in there don’t mess around and will take your camera if they catch you trying to sneak a photo so since I had already had camera issues, I decided not to chance it. That’s pretty huge for those of you who know me, because I’m always pushing the envelope. It took the Japanese company 13 years to clean all of the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. Again, I just kept thinking “I can’t believe I’m actually here!” The Sistine Chapel is beautiful and really bright! That really surprised me. Another interesting tidbit thanks to Fran is that from painting standing up for so long and looking up, it caused Michael Angelo to go blind later on in life because it damaged his eyes. Also, he came back many years after painting the ceiling to paint the huge judgment scent at one end of the chapel and that took him 5 years to paint.

After leaving the Sistine Chapel, Fran left us and I was going to go up to the Cuppola but the line was so long that I decided to go into the St. Peter's Basilica which is the HUGE church in the Vatican. This is where I saw the famous statue of Mary holding Jesus' body after the crucifixion.

Fran did say that the reason why the statue is behind glass is because some crazy person came and hacked off one of Mary’s hand because he thought he was Jesus and was screaming “You’re not my mother”. Some people are loco!

Some other interesting parts of the Basilica was the huge wooden structure in the middle, I’m not sure what the name of it was. And the fact that a mass was being held inside that day but in one of the small chapels on the side of the church. I really wonder what a mass would be like at the altar in the middle of the Basilica. Also the Swedish guards in their colorful outfits were very interesting to me. The word is that Michael Angelo might have also designed their uniforms.

After seeing a lot of the Vatican, I decided to go get some lunch and then go to several souvenir shops to look for a specific necklace that my boyfriend had bought for me and his mom when he came to Rome. I couldn't find it and luckily for me, I called him when I went back to my hotel for a rest and he told me there was a post office next to the Vatican (because the Vatican is technically it's own country with it's own postal service) and inside the post office is another souvenir shop. I hustled over there right before they closed (which is good since it was Saturday and they wouldn't be open on Sunday) and found the necklace that I was looking for! His mom's was pretty beat up and I really wanted to get her another one. I was so excited that I had found it!!

I decided to head to the Pantheon that evening and to also see Piazza Navona which is a beautiful spot in the city with a lot of people, singing, music, art, etc. I was SO excited when I made it to the Pantheon like 3 minutes before it closed and was able to take a look around before the announcement came for everyone to leave.

I stuck around the outside of the Pantheon for a little while and then went to a quaint restaurant near Piazza Navona for dinner. The waiters around there were VERY aggressive in trying to get people to eat at their restaurants. I picked one kind of out of the way and it was quite funny that the two waiters were fighting with each other in Italian.

After that, I decided to head back to the hotel and rest up since I wanted to be first in line to see the Cupola at the Vatican the next morning! My tour book said that going first thing in the morning was the best thing to do so I figured to make it my mission before I got on a plane back to mi Espana. This was such a wonderful day in Rome and I’m so incredibly thankful to be blessed to have gotten to experience all of it!