Rome Day 2

This catch up is hurting my brain.  Rome is all mixing together.   What did we do which days....?!!?  Okay,  focus.

Day Two.  Plan today was to see the Vatican and St. Peter's Square,  which is not square at all.  We had booked tours with Angels Tours before leaving for Europe.  Recommended by my aunt and uncle.  I also recommend them,  but not Alex...more to come on that later.  You can pay before you leave home,  make sure and bring your PayPal receipt.  Also they say to look for a yellow umbrella.  This is a falsehood.  Look for a off white umbrella with angel babies on it.  Cause you know,  that's close to yellow. 

Up and out to meet at the Vatican Museum steps at 9 am.  Not long to get there,  subway is always faithful.  Get to the Vatican join the throngs of others walking in the same direction.  Get a little turned around and end up in from of St. Peter's Cathedral,  this is not the right end....head back around to the other side.  Walk past the long.....long line of people starting to wait for entry.  They are not happy to watch us walk past the line.  Too bad so sad,  we paid for a tour.

Here's what I know about the Vatican.  The Pope lives there,  it's an independent state within the city boundaries of Rome.  It has completely seperate everything,  police, government, laws,  finances.  Why?  I dunno.  It has approx 800 residents,  mostly nuns and stuff.  It's surrounded by a big wall,  which makes it very handy to know that you're still actually near the Vatican.  There is a mondo museum that holds a lot of old stuff.  With Museum entry fees alone,  Vatican City makes approx 66 million Euro per year.

There is tight security in the Museum....airport like.  Take off your bag and junk,  go through the metal detectors and all that.  Then get herded into a big area where everything seems to stop.  Tip 1 - go potty first.  The Vatican Museum is 7 miles long, and there are not washrooms along the way.  The problem with this,  one bathroom, thousands of women.  You do the calculations.  So we all took our tinkle and then got back into the herd.  They only let through a few groups at a time,  spaceing them out...so you wait some more.

First area of visiting is a court yard area where they've set up different stations.  This is where tour guides take their peeps to talk about the Sistine Chapel.  There are detailed pics of the paintings and stuff.  You aren't supposed to talk or take pics in the Chapel,  so they do all the history stuff before hand.  Gianni is our tour guide,  he's excellent.  That's him on the left... 

Then you head in,  and spend the next three hours looking at stuff.  Interesting,  tonnes of history,  lots of broken stuff,  lots of weird stuff...

You know,  like a hallway of heads...

  

And the maxin some relaxin god.

Somewhere in the maze of museum you end up at the Sistine Chapel.  If you are an art history major,  I'm sure this is very exciting.  If you are not,  like me,  this is a rectangle room,  with a lot of paintings, that is jammed full of people, and is hot.  The guards spend all their time yelling and clapping for everyone to be quiet.  And "No Photo" is being yelled constantly.  Now,  it seems that "No Photo" in Italian doesn't compute, cause everyone is secretly taking photo's.  Why No Photo?  Because some Japanese company was smarty marty and put a phopyright on the paintings when they offered to clean them all for free.  Did we take pictures in the Sistine Chapel,  against copyright laws and at the demand of the Vatican?  That's for me to know and you to not....  = )  In the mean time,  you can,  again,  find anything on the internet.  This is the Sistine Chapel.

 The tables and stuff aren't in there,  it's a big empty room.  You come in through that door on the right.

This is the other end.  Not sure why there are gates,  but again we're herded through them.  Like shoulder to toe touching of the people around you.  Yuck. 

Outside again.  You can pay to take an elevator to the top of St. Peter's Cathedral,  which apparantly has an amazing view of Rome.  But the line is 2 hours long.  So you can also get a pic online...

Around the front of St. Peter's Cathedral where they show you a giant door.  It's the Holy Door and only the Pope goes through it.  OR,  it's opened every 25 years.  OR,  if the church is short on cash then they let the common folk pay a fee and they can walk through it and all their sins are forgiven.  So,  which ever is needed at the time...that's what it's used for.  This was only the opinion of our tour guide,  who is not Catholic,  and we could make the decision ourselves on how we felt about this.

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So,  we're not Catholic looking for our sins to be forgiven,  though that is a nifty way to get it done quickly.  AND it's not the 25th anniversary....AND I'm not the Pope,  so we had to go through Door #2.

Uh,  see the people at the bottom,  k,  now think about the size again.

This curtained off part,  this is where they've written the names of other churches on the floor.  They've measured,  and this is how big your church is, and your church is....and neener neener,  we're the biggest in the world.

They wouldn't let me stand in the middle of the alter and put my arms over my head...

"SHE-RA Princess of Power"

It's big,  that's all you can say.  We've seen a lot of church by this time,  and this place takes the cake for size.  And then there's the side parts, and the this part and the that part.  It's just big.  There's statues everywhere and paintins,  sculptures and gold.  They say that there is a piece of the Cross of Christ there.  Though you can't see it,  and no one can see it to verify,  just take our word for it.  There's also a wax dead pope.    The story goes that they had to open his coffin after 40 years of death.  Why?  That's a very good question.  When they did, they found him perfectly preserved...so they poured wax on him and displayed him in the church.  Huh?  Whatever.  Not my pic,  cause of course I can't seem to remember the flash drive from home...but ya,  that's the dude.

Outside we go.  Have you seen Angels and Demons?  We did right before we left.  It's necessary for some history on the Vatican and everything.   It make St. Peters look bigger than it is,  but it's still pretty impressive.  It was the week after Easter,  so the Pope had left his chairs out.  You can't sit on them,  there's gates everywhere.  That Pope guy is not always accomodating.  But he was in-house.  His window is the top one,  left building,  third from the right.  He waved to me.  These are our pics...

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See...told ya...I was there.