We woke up at our hotel, packed everything up and rushed off to Rome to find the beginning of our tour. Because we were rather limited on time my parents decided that they'd rather pay a little bit of extra money to get in on a tour than stand in the line to get in. Our tour guide was really neat. She was good at making sure that she didn't lose anyone and that we all saw a bunch of really interesting stuff. And she was really really Catholic, which was pretty awesome. I mean, if you're touring the Vatican you kind of want a Catholic to tell you about it.
It was pretty exciting for me that one of the very first things that we saw was this giant gold ball.
Huge golden ball in the courtyard of the pinecone.
Now, to fully understand my excitement I'm going to have to go even further back in time and post a picture from Ireland, from Trinity College.
Look familiar?
Alright, so here's the story. While in Ireland we went to Trinity College to look at the Book of Kells. When we had finished that all of us had reached the point where we were tired and borderline cranky. Pretty sure it was one of those times when we were all just tired and hungry and wanted to sit down for forever. But then we walked around the corner and saw this giant golden ball (see above). As we had been taking an art class Catherine and I wandered over to the ball and proceeded to "analyze" the piece of "modern art". We made up some stuff about the ball being the world that looks so smooth on the outside, but it's starting to break apart and reveal the complexities and problems in life and as the world grows more wicked the ball breaks up more. We laughed at ourselves and found that laughter brought the energy that we needed to continue on.
Fast forward and I'm standing in the Vatican. Our tour guide is trying to tell us about the Sistine Chapel and what's on the ceiling and all I can look at is this golden ball because it's the EXACT SAME. (And I'd taken a course where we discussed in detail what is happening on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, so her nice pictures and explanations weren't strictly necessary). So I'm hoping that she says something about it and finally she does! Apparently the golden smooth part represents the Catholic church and as the world and people start to break away from the Catholic church because of the complexities and problems in life the world grows more wicked and less smooth, like the Catholic church. Yup. It was definitely pretty exciting to have my totally made up explanation be validated and confirmed.
Anyway, we saw a whole bunch of cool art in the Vatican but I think that one of my favorite things to see was this room that was full of tapestries.
Tapestry of the nativity.
To make a long story short, these tapestries hang in the Sistine chapel on the walls on very special occasions. (used to be all the time until they realized that art is fragile). The paintings that these tapestries were based off of were done by Raphael and are currently in London. And yes, I did see the cartoons in London. I thought it was a neat story about how the popes were trying to one-up each other with art and I thought wow, well that's neat and it's too bad that they aren't in the Sistine Chapel anymore. Nope, instead they're just hanging in the museum that you have to walk through first. Yeah, pretty cool.
The Sistine Chapel was absolutely amazing of course. I have seen few things so stunning in the my entire life. Michelangelo was a freaking genius. We just stood and stared at the ceiling for a good half an hour. And then you remember that Michelangelo didn't really do frescoes and then you stare some more, even more impressed and amazed.
No pictures though. It's like the one Catholic church ever that you're not allowed to take pictures in. Also the only one that I've been in where there's an intensely concentrated effort to keep people quiet at all times. I think that they do a really good job trying to remind people that a chapel is a chapel.
Anyway, we left the Sistine Chapel and went to the Basilica next door. It was absolutely enormous (the Statue of Liberty could sit comfortably on the floor in the domed section) and really intricate and colorful. The most impressive part for me was these paintings that I'm pretty sure were originally done by Raphael. The actual paintings aren't there anymore (they had to take them away so that they could be properly preserved) so instead they decided to just recreate the paintings exactly with tiles. Yes. TILES. This is what they look like.
Made of tile.
So that was pretty nuts. That was the end of the tour though, so we just went out onto St. Peter's Square afterwards. David and I found the spot where you can stand and have all of the columns line up, so that was pretty cool, but we couldn't stay long.
Me in front of the Basilica. Sistine Chapel's the brownish, not very nice looking building on my left.
Anyway, we had to rush off to find the Pantheon! We did find it, but there's so many old and awesome buildings in Rome that at first we weren't sure that we'd found the right building. But we saw the dome with the big hole inside, and then we knew for sure that we were in the right place. Kind of embarrassing that we weren't sure we'd found it? Yes, but then again I also walked into the Roman Senate without realizing what I was doing.
In front of the Pantheon!
The tell-tale dome and hole in the roof. I guess they don't get a lot of rain.
We sat down here for a few minutes before gathering up our energy to find a bus and say farewell to Rome. In our quest to find the appropriate bus and bus stop to use we decided to grab gelato one last time. It was delicious, although the gelato we got between the Colosseum and the Roman Forum was far superior. We boarded the bus, rode back to where our car was parked and bid a tearful farewell to Rome. (Okay, so nobody cried, but it was pretty sad. It's an amazing city and we only got to spend a very very short amount of time there.)
And as this is long enough, we're going to cut off right here. Hopefully sometime soon I'll get the last bit of my Europe experience posted!
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