Saturday, October 12, 2013

Wednesday + {Day Twenty-Three: Rome}


Still in Rome! Today we went to the Vatican museum. We practically walked right in. We had tickets, of course, but there was no line and almost no security. Almost as soon as we went into the museum it started to pour rain. Great timing!

We wandered among the rooms and saw a lot of Greek, Roman, and Egyptian antiquities, but the best part of the whole museum is, without a doubt, the Sistine Chapel. We weren’t allowed to take photos, but I’m sure they wouldn’t have even remotely done justice to it. I can’t believe that it took Michaelangelo only four years to design and make it!

After the Sistine Chapel, we headed outside, then, after a short break, got in line for St. Peter’s Basilica. In addition to having the Pietra on display (behind bulletproof after some nut took a hammer to it in 1972), St. Peter’s Basilica is huge. It also we designed by Michaelangelo, but they made a lot of changes after his death and he died before he could finish certain parts (like the dome).

Apparently St. Peter--or at least the bones of someone who has been historically treated as St. Peter by pilgrims, etc.--are buried under the ceremonial altar. There were also two dead popes on display.

After we walked through the church, we decided to sit in the pews--something we've done in every other cathedral we've been to. Only our timing was great/awful and before we knew what was happening the entire church filled up with something like sixty thousand people and they started Mass.

It was beautiful, but since only I had eaten before going into the church, we had to extract ourselves partway through before we all passed out from hunger. After stopping at this place and ordering what we thought were individual pizzas but were, in fact, pizzas big enough for 2-3 people, we went home and all squeezed onto our couch-bed to watch New Girl, a television show we all love. It was a nice break from all the running around, especially the transportation which is definitely over capacity all the time.

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