Rome, around the world
June 7, 2016
More Rome adventures! Rome is such an incredible city. I definitely sensed that it knows it’s the best, not necessarily in a pretentious way, but in a super confident movie star kind of way. Rome is the prettiest girl in the room and you get to feel special just to be near her.
Day 4: The Vatican Museum. Holy Mother of whatever, I’ve never seen so much fanciness in one place before! It’s hard to describe… like… you’re walking along staring at fantastic sculptures from the first century, then you turn a, corner and there is like a little a collection of tools made by the first human, they have entire gigantic rooms dedicated to “misc. silver things,” there’s like the arc of the covenant tucked in a corner, the dead sea scrolls are just casually on display behind priceless tapestries. It’s just so much! So extravagant!
Good thing they covered that man’s noodle up! This is a family establishment!
(click here for the panorama if the embedded one doesn’t work, or to see it full screen)
Not the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Not the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
dat butt.
Not the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Not the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Raphael’s “School of Athens.” Raphael has a whole room of incredible paintings. I could’ve spent a long time staring at these.
We enjoyed the map gallery a lot.
Some bored soldier made himself a game.
This is the Sistine Chapel ceiling.
Despite all the wonderful things the museum has to offer the main goal is to make it to the Sistine Chapel. Some people make the destination clear by plowing through all the other exhibits, but I got to feel like a fancy art appreciator by taking my time with all the brilliant antiquities.
The Sistine Chapel is amazing. I tried to hide my enthusiasm for it by taking my time staring at the cutlery Jesus used and examining the Pope’s fave pair of ruby studded earrings, but really I wanted to run to the Sistine Chapel. All I wanted was to stare at it and see for myself if it’s as amazing as textbooks have led me to believe.
While the Sistine Chapel ceiling is every bit as wonderful as it should be. I couldn’t help but let my love for these paintings to be tainted by the atmosphere. You get shuffled into the room with lots of warning that you should be wearing pants and that you’re not to take any photos. This is a holy place, of course. You also have to be quiet. Impatient men in suits will yell at you if you speak above a whisper or try to take a photo. Presumably they will also yell if you try to make your cargo pants into cargo shorts in this warm stuffy room (something I really wanted to see).
Mainly the bit about being quiet bothered me, not that I wanted yelling or shouting all around, but I wanted so much to share my excitement about the paintings without fear of being shushed through a loud speaker. Yes, they used a microphone to shush people. I normally like my art to be enjoyed silently, but in this big crowded room that we’re all craning our necks to see every bit of Michelangelo’s masterpiece, I needed everyone to just relax. I needed the men in suits to not shush us every five minutes. Honestly, I needed to be alone in this room with this painting. I wanted to both scream at it and lie down to stare at it in silence.
In short, the Sistine Chapel and its ceiling is incredible … breathtaking … other worldly. The Sistine Chapel Experience Project is a pile of donkey butt dump-ings. My best recommendation is to do some relaxing meditation before you enter and maybe while you’re inside and then again after. OR bring some adult beverage, some liquid calm.
We did it! We made it out of the museum! I’m confident that we got to see about 75% of the stuff. Most of it briefly.
Day 5: We ate pizza and chilled before our big flight to the UK. I filled my boots with pasta and pastries. Italian food is my fav.
Note: if you’re near the Vatican check out Pizza Zizza. Super nice guys making super tasty pizzas.
So Rome, we did like Romans do and now we have to flee to Scotland before our tourists visas expire.
Bonus map of the places we got to see!
~B~