Day 5 - Museum, museum, Sistine Chapel, museum...

5-18

I am just going to put out that I am absolutely shot so here we go. We got our glorious late start and took the subway up to the Vatican City area. We must have been running late though because we were really booking it for a while but we all got to the Vatican museum just fine. We went through so, so many rooms full of paintings and tapestries, sculptures and all sorts of things. My favorite was actually some eggs that the Russian tzars used to commission as gifts from this guy Fabergé. Some of them were pretty elaborate. There was one that was shaped like a tree (I don’t know why it was in with all the eggs…done by the same guy I guess) and it had a key and when you put the key in and turned it a bird popped out and sang! I didn’t actually get to see it do this but that’s what the card thing next to it told me it did. The other egg I liked a lot actually looked like a rosebud. Now, I liked it because it looked like a rosebud but then I read the little card thing and that is what made it one of my favorites. It said that Nicolas (who later became tzar) wrote in his diary “My dream – is to marry Alix G. one day” which he later did and her first Easter souvenir (that’s what the eggs were for, Easter) was the rosebud egg. Sigh. Sorry guys.

Moving right along then, so we went through the museum and there were a lot of paintings. Many of Mary and Jesus and a lot of Saints and such. I decided that I don’t like the way Mary is depicted in most paintings. She either looks like an idiot to me or she looks really mean. I found a maybe two Mary’s who were happy and not-airheaded looking but that definitely was not the norm. ANYWAY, after many paintings and sculptures, a hallway of maps (which are extremely precise, people still use them to find out where their Italian ancestors lived) we met up in a courtyard between museums. From there we continued over to the Sistine Chapel museum which houses a lot more than just the Sistine Chapel but that’s how we identified it none-the-less. We saw countless other paintings and artifacts and finally came to the Sistine Chapel where we found mobs of people (though it was less crowded than usual) taking many, many illegal photographs. There were police guys all around trying to enforce the no photography rule but I just felt bad for them. They were also attempting to keep it quiet. I give them credit for trying. Poor guys, I think that would be a long job.

By the time we finished in the Sistine we were all walking in a daze. So much to take in! Every painting has so many different parts; I felt like I could stand in some of the hallways for days and still not catch it all. There was picture of the creation/fall of Adam and Eve that I really liked. It had a lot of creatures in it: little weasels and birds and an elephant and tiger and lions and all sorts of animals interacting. I liked it a lot because the animals weren’t snuggling like they sometimes are depicted as doing, they were running around, baring their teeth at each other, not killing each other but not being best friends either. Then you see Adam and Eve being tempted. It’s actually right  in the middle but there so much other stuff that I hardly felt they were the focus. I thought that was interesting because wouldn’t that have been how it was? Everyone doing their thing while Adam and Eve get tempted by Satan. I really enjoyed it.

We tumbled out of the museums and went to get lunch. We got pizza, again. It was delicious as usual but I am beginning to worry I will get sick of Margheritta (cheese) pizza by the end of Rome. By this time it was 3 in the afternoon. We had spent 3+ hours in the Vatican museums! Refreshed by our interlude, we went off to see St. Peter’s Basilica. The line for that wrapped around the square though so we ended up nixing that in favor of finishing off the other things we were going to do today. So we marched over to the Castel Sant’ Angelo. That was so cool! There were all these courtyards on different levels and arches and stairways. There was one window in the stairway that had a couple of brick steps under it. I thought that if I lived in that castle that would be my reading niche. I was so bummed I didn’t get a picture of it. We went up to the top place (what is that called on a castle anyway?) and got some really sweet pictures of Rome. Pretty soon a mob of school kids with cameras came up and that was about when we decided to take our leave. Next we walked down to the Spanish steps and one of the guys presented about them. And after that we trekked up to the Piazza de Popolo (the one we went to yesterday) to go to that little Da Vinci museum that we didn’t get to yesterday.

It really was amazing. They had built a bunch of the machines that Da Vinci had drawn and we even got to turn the handles on some of them and watch them work. Now there was an amazing thinker. There were signs about how he learned about all of this stuff. He had this insatiable thirst for knowledge but not only that he just tried to combine all these things he knew into different inventions to make life easier or better. I can’t even imagine trying to function with so many different ideas and thoughts running through my head all the time.

That museum marked the end of our day together. It was about 630pm by the time we ended it all and we were all exhausted. We took the subway back down to the hotel and got off. Jared, Alaina and I went to get some gelato and then I decided that would hold me over. As soon as I got to my room I know I wouldn’t be leaving for supper: too much effort. So tonight will be a quiet one. I’ll shower and read some. Maybe hit the sack early tonight. We have an early morning tomorrow—we are going to try and hit St. Peter’s before the rush—so that should be interesting. I did take a lot photos of different paintings I liked and such, I just didn’t want to fill up a lot of space describing them when I can show you later.


OH! For those of you who have missed it, I would like to inform you that my watch tan-line has returned and is as blinding as ever. :D