Rome and the Vatican

Capital City #15

From Florence, which had been consistently rainy or drizzly, we moved on to hot and sunny Rome. Not only was there more sun, there were more people, more touts (I just recently learned that word) and more thievery – more on that later. Our apartment also had the added charm of having multiple biting insects in the garden area. I found out about them the hard way as we waited around for our hostess to let us in. Six bites later, I resolved to be much faster in unlocking the front door in future. I tried that. Still more bites, so we implemented a new, ridiculous strategy: John, in whom the insects have virtually no interest, went ahead, unlocked the door, then I ran through the garden and into the hallway. It worked!!

We spent our first afternoon there doing a general survey of the city, visiting the Spanish Steps (as exciting as the Bridge of Sighs in Venice), the Trevi fountain (less so, as there was no water and tons of scaffolding), the Trinita dei Monti church, the Sant 'Agnese church, Piazza Barberini, various fountains and the Pantheon.

Some of Trajan's Column!

Trevi fountain

Our overall impression of the city was that it was dirty, smelly and noisy, with lots of rubbish and graffiti everywhere (graffiti everywhere in the Italian cities we saw, but especially in Rome - it's no wonder that graffiti is an Italian word), and full of ruins - including the ones that are tens of hundreds of years old. And crowded.

My, but was it crowded. Maybe it was because it was a Saturday, but there were the biggest crowds of anywhere we've been since Disneyland, which also meant there was a multitude of guys trying to encourage you to buy splatty ball toys, or selfie camera sticks, or sticking a rose directly in front of you. For some reason, John never got a rose shoved in his face. Weird.

The crowds and the Spanish Steps.

It was also a cool kind of lively, though, with some cool street art going on, and great buskers outside the Pantheon – it seemed like the busking standards were somehow kept quite high at this particular location. The Pantheon was also interesting, with its perfectly circular shape, and completely open space in the middle of the roof; presumably nobody sits directly underneath when it's raining. Interesting for a building named the Pantheon to now be a church devoted to the one God of a monotheistic faith.

I will never get the Pantheon and the Parthenon mixed up again.

The next day we visited a nearby church, the Rome Baptist Church, and heard a sermon on living waters. It was okay; it definitely made me notice whenever I was thirsty for the rest of the day, as that was one of the pastor's key illustration points. Which happened a fair bit, as we spent that afternoon exploring the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill in the burning sun. We made like Asian tourists and held our umbrella up as a sun-protector; it actually worked quite well. They're onto something!

Even with that measure, though, our visit didn't start out as the best experience; we were both still too hot (and thirsty), and the audioguide was confusing to follow; in one way, because it was hard to locate exactly which building the man was commenting on, and also because several of the places on the audioguide tour were blocked off. I developed an unreasonable hatred of it after the first few locations, and left it solely to John while just reading the information boards for myself. And then I was happier!

a bunch of ruins

 

 More ruinous remains. Perhaps I'd be able to comment on them further if I'd stuck with the hateful audioguide.

It was cool to see these ancient remains of an ancient civilization, but as I'd studied Roman history at uni, I realized I already knew a fair bit of the general background we were being told – maybe another reason I wasn't digging the audioguide. It was good to be reminded of what I'd forgotten, though, and learn some new things, and to see the actual main place where all their politics were centred. (SPOILER) I actually preferred the later ruins we visited in Pompeii and Herculaneum, though, which focused on the daily lives of citizens in these cities, and walked us through actual, often amazingly well-preserved places where people lived.

It was really cool seeing structures I'd studied in Classics at high school, though - behold, the Arch of Titus!

Carrying away the plunder of Jerusalem! in fulfillment of Jesus' prophecy.

The next day, we went on an adventure.

We had decided to expend money, again, on another new Kindle, again. This required an electronics store that stocked them, and the most likely option John found was Mediaworld, in a mall half an hour's bus ride north of us. We debussed at around the right location, and looked round at a barren landscape, with apartment buildings in the distance and random lone supermarkets. Not what we had expected. We set out in what we hoped was the right direction, our umbrella sheltering us from the harsh sun. Then it broke. So we walked along with the sun beating down on us as we sought to find the mall. After maybe 15 minutes, John located a likely candidate on his smartphone, so we followed a deserted-looking path, littered with litter, until we saw the mall! Yay! However, we couldn't see any way into it. We ended up going down the side of a road leading into the parking lot underneath, and from there managed to find an escalator leading into the mall's body. We were back in the land of the living.

A new Kindle and umbrella later, we went out a different way, yet still couldn't find any footpath for pedestrians to cross from the mall back to the city streets. We actually suspect that none exists. It seemed to be a Mall for Car Owners Only. Back up the side of roads we went, until we came to another narrow, overgrown footpath.

This had all taken considerably longer than I'd bargained for; I'd planned a 2-hour or so trip to the mall, followed by a little more sightseeing in the late afternoon, when the heat of the sun had faded. Silly me; I'd assumed the mall would be pedestrian-accessible. However, by the time we found a bus stop, waited there for half an hour, caught a bus to the metro station, caught the metro to the Colosseum, we arrived 5 minutes after entry closed for the day. Arrgh; it was most vexing, especially since the ticket we'd bought yesterday for the Roman Forum was a joint ticket with the Colosseum, valid for two days. We would now have to buy a new ticket just for the Colosseum.

Yo - quit yo moanin'! Post a picture of the Arch of Constantine instead.

And a close-up of one of the medallions. Oh, high school - it's all coming back, it's all coming back to me noooow!

The next day we woke determined and reinvigorated; we would finish all our sightseeing today. Off we went to the Vatican, to see the museums, including the Sistine Chapel, and St Peter's Basilica. As we walked along from the metro stop, we came under the most sustained barrage of tour offers we've encountered on our entire trip; a new person every few feet offered a “skip the line!” tour. A nice guy started talking to us about his one at the lights, and kept talking to us as we joined the line. Our resolve wavered. The internet had advised us to buy tickets in advance for the Vatican Museums, but that was an extra 4 euros each. The internet had also advised us to buy tickets in advance for the Accademia in Florence, and the line there had only ended up being 5-10 minutes long. I'd expected this line to be the same. This was Rome, however, and the crowds had turned out in force – this line was long and wide, and we still needed to see the Colosseum that day as well. NEEDED. For once, we succumbed, and agreed to join an English-speaking tour of the Museums, which also gave us skip-the-line access to St Peter's Basilica afterwards; St Peter's is free, and can't be booked in advance.

Our Italian tour guide, a woman with an interesting way of speaking, took us through some of the rooms rapid-fire, to pause at certain stand-outs and draw our attention to particular aspects. So, really, it was just like any regular tour. Except now we were one of Them (or two of Them). Part of a big group that blocks all the space, making it hard to get past, while walking interminably slowly. Oh well – the Vatican Museums were so busy anyway we probably didn't make that much difference.

A section of ceiling. 3D sculpture, right? Aha - that's what we thought! Apparently just painted to look that way!! It fooled us!

I found it helpful and appreciated the extra insight she provided to some of the artwork; since religious art, in general, isn't really my thing, I didn't mind walking right past much of it, but really liked most of the ones we lingered on. Caravaggio's picture of Jesus getting taken down from the cross was really striking in its realism, and like Michelangelo's David was beautiful just from the perspective of representing the human body really well. I would have preferred it if our tour had been a bit longer, as we missed out a whole section of the museums, but again – religious art is not my favourite, and really, we were all mainly hanging out for the Sistine Chapel.

We're not convinced our guide had all her facts straight, though; she informed us Peter was the first martyr – pretty sure that was Stephen. She also made some highly dubious claims about Peter being the “prince” of the apostles, as well as the apostolic succession going through him to the popes – of course, that kind of stuff is taught by the Catholic church, not just by our tour guide, but as kids of the Reformation we don't hold with all that dogma. Biblical truths, please!

a big bath on some great feet

We went from skewering the Bible to the Sistine Chapel. I was prepared to be blown away, and ended up ... underwhelmed a bit, sorry! Adam was great, as were many of the paintings on the famous ceiling. I wasn't so taken with the ones on the wall, though. A bunch of them also looked to me like they'd had clothing painted over what was originally their naked form, which looked a bit silly – I think from what I've heard this may well be the case. Furthermore, the room was absolutely packed, we had about ten minutes allotted to us to stand and drink it all in, and as it's still technically a place of worship, we were meant to be quiet. This meant that whenever the noise from all the people started rising too much, one of the guards would get on the loudspeaker and yell, “Silence please! Shhh!” Or, when people were taking photos, even after the myriad of signs expressly forbidding it, guards would charge towards them and bellow, “No photos! NOOO photos!” I rather wonder if their attempts to gain silence didn't actually disturb the peace even more.

I would insert a picture of the Sistine Chapel ceiling here, but... refer to above paragraph. Here's a ceiling from a different area. This one's actually 3D.

From there, we headed directly to St Peter's, and got to see the new most impressive church we've seen yet. So grand – so fancy.

St Peter's and the massive square outside.

 

We saw a statue of Peter (we presume), but the poor guy had most of his feet worn away to blobs from all the people superstitiously rubbing their hands on them.

Poor Peter's tootsies.

There was a gorgeous stained glass window representing the Holy Spirit.

It's nice to see the Holy Spirit get some prominence. Normally He would be eclipsed by Mary in terms of representation - so wack!

And after we went out, we saw the monstrously long line we'd been able to skip, and were again glad we had decided to take the tour.

Also, incidentally, Michelangelo's Pieta inside St Peter's.

Also, this guy. To adapt a Miss Congeniality line: It takes a very secure man to dress like that.

Our final stop in Rome was the Colosseum – successfully this time, though a tiny piece of me died having to pay admission again. It was worth it, though; really interesting to read about what went on there. Even if what went on was really brutal. I ended our visit feeling more distaste for the Colosseum than before; so many people killed here for people's morbid entertainment, so many Christians martyred, and poor beasts slaughtered. Ugh. It reminded me of the Hunger Games but, of course, ancient games such as these came first, and actually happened. In places like Spain, too, similar events happen even today, with the ongoing popularity of bullfights.

 from the outside

on the inside!

We rounded off our last day with a meal out in a restaurant, where John got some lasagne with sauce that tasted like the spaghetti sauce from a can, and I got a (nicer) creamy pasta dish. And then we boarded an absolutely PACKED metro back. John was wearing baggy pants, since he'd made sure to have his knees covered to be decent for the Vatican. He had carelessly left his smartphone in his pocket. And about three stops in, he realized he couldn't feel it anymore. Yes; you guessed it; someone stole it. Our first pickpocketing experience! I had just been thinking earlier that day how we hadn't even witnessed anyone trying to steal from us. Well, after initial frustration, we played the thankfulness game, and thanked God that: it wasn't our passports, or wallets, or my smartphone (mine didn't have a screen lock until that day. Now it does), or a break-in to our room. Or my Kindle. That would have been very sad.

So we left Rome. It had been a mixed experience; we were glad we'd visited it, but we weren't sorry to be leaving. On the plus side, just to finish off, at a wonderful supermarket in Rome I discovered not only Special K - peach and apricot flavour!!!! but fabulous new Snickers bar ice creams. Yum!!