I totally forgot it was St. Patrick’s Day today. But that’s not really important anyway, so…there was really no point in mentioning it. Praise its uselessness! Praise it I say!

We got up around five thirty or so this morning and, thanks to jet lag, just as Vig had promised we were all quite awake. Then we took a bus and pranced off to a place where Carlo wasn’t technically supposed to let us off, but he did anyway so we had to move quickly. And then there was an issue with our water bottles since we were going to the Vatican museum and they wouldn’t let us take water inside. So Sarah put ours back on the bus and that, m’dears, is the last time I ever saw my dear water bottle. All well, I got others later.

Behold the statues above the arch we were waiting alongside! The door we actually entered through wasn't nearly as interesting as this. :P Click here for all of my pictures of the Vatican Museum. And some of St. Peter's Basilica. xD

We had to get there early to stand in line with the other groups waiting to get in or we’d lose our spot and then have to go and wait in the big huge line with all the non-group people. Only much later in the day when we were leaving did we realize how significant that was. The line we saw then stretched on and wound around so much that I had no idea which way it was going. Anyway, we went into the museum and it turns out that, no, I didn’t need my work shoes or slacks like I had thought originally. I just wore jeans and tennis shoes and got in just fine, but that may be because it was the museum and not some other part of the Vatican. Well, we had to wear these little radios around our necks and put the little plastic ear pieces in one of our ears so we could hear the tour guide. I don’t think it was Vig at first, but I do think he took over later. Dunno, my memories of today are pretty hazy. We just did way too much. I’m surprised I remember anything at all.


See? I told you the door we went through wasn't that pretty. And yet I took a picture of it anyway...

The ear piece made the inside of my ear itch like crazy and I had to hook the little radio onto my jacket and then my purse when I had to take my jacket off when I got too hot. This did not bode well since I kept knocking it off whenever I moved to take a picture of something. It also didn’t help that I had to hold my jacket in one arm because that made it insanely difficult to take any clear pictures on the first try.

The only things that I really remember were the ceilings and one picture of Jesus in particular. The ceilings in some of these halls…there was just so much detail! I guess you could call it busy but, really, they were gorgeous. Heh, I loved the ceilings far more than any of the paintings, statues, and tapestries we saw that day. They were, for lack of a better word, amazing. The painting that I recall depicted Jesus coming out of the tomb. Normally, that wouldn’t be that significant, but it was done with the same effect that the Mona Lisa has. As in, the subject is looking out at you and, no matter where you move, his eyes look like they’re following you. It’s kind of creepy and, yes, I do have a picture of it that depicts the effect pretty well. It’s so weird to actually be there with this huge Jesus watching you. I’m tempted to use the word profound to describe it, so I will.




The view outside one of the windows.

We went into the Sistine Chapel after going through the museum, but Vig had to get special permission to talk in there since he was a tour guide and didn’t have to talk very loudly since we all had the radios to listen through. I don’t know why but I always figured that the Sistine Chapel was a lot…smaller. I mean the room in general, I just didn’t expect it to be so incredibly large. I’ve seen a lot of the paintings in there before, back in high school in Mr. Crawford’s humanities class, so I felt pretty accomplished knowing that I was seeing the real things. Obviously, you’re not allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel, so I had to look up the ones I have on Google. None of them really do it justice, though. There’s just too much to see all around you and it’s all too beautiful to be captured adequately in a mere picture.

They should really have places where you can lay down or something so you can look at the ceiling for extended periods of time because my neck was killing me after only a few minutes and I hadn’t seen nearly enough to stop looking. Just like with the ceilings in the museum, there’s an incredible amount of detail. Not just on the ceiling either, but the walls as well. On that note, it’s amazing how well everything’s been restored. There are still a few spots that they left untouched to show you just how bad it all looked before getting restored. You can barely see anything at all, it’s so dark! But, back to the detail. You’d be amazed at all the tiny, random little things Michelangelo painted to fill in all the gaps and blank spaces. I was thoroughly impressed by the philosophers and the sibyls. The niches that they’re sitting in look so real, it really makes you question if it can possibly be just a painting you’re looking at. This trick, I came to realize later, was extremely popular, especially when it came to the insides of cathedrals and depicting the lives of saints. They look so much like rooms you could just walk into or, at the very least, the columns and little decorations framing the frescoes look like carvings.

There’s no way I could possibly describe everything in the Sistine Chapel. There’s way too much and it’s nothing like actually being there and experiencing that sharp pain in your neck from looking up too much—okay, I don’t really recommend that last part, but it can’t be helped.

We all kept getting shushed because, no matter the rules, someone is always going to be whispering somewhere in the Chapel and when a couple hundred people are doing that it starts sounding like a mild roar. So, every now and again a priest would go up on the altar at the front and we’d all hear a shockingly loud “SHHH!!!” It carries a good distance, I gotta say.

After that I think we went down to see the tombs of the various different popes, where we, of course, weren’t allowed to take pictures. The little details on those carvings are unbelievable, though. Once again a “pictures don’t do it justice” sort of thing. It’s not like there was anything particularly large, colorful, or fantastically beautiful, it’s just all those tiny little locks of hair, folds in the clothing, wrinkles on their faces, and every other meticulous detail you could ever think of. The amount of work that went into all the stonework is baffling really.

We moved on to St. Peter’s Basilica where Vig told us to get pictures of the Swiss guards. Now, how I missed them I don’t know, but I guess I didn’t bother to look around even the tiniest bit because if I had, believe me, I would’ve seen them. I saw them after I came back out of the basilica but there was no time to get a picture then since we were moving on. So, yeah, I had to look up pictures of them online. I kind of feel sorry for them, though. I just…who the hell came up with those uniforms? Well, it certainly makes them a sight to behold. It’s no wonder everyone wants to get pictures of them.



My batteries ran out in the basilica, but Sarah lent me some so I could continue taking pictures. Once again I must comment on the sheer amount of detail put into everything. Also, it’s huge. No, huge is the wrong word. Hugemongous makes it sound silly. Enormous. Yes, that sounds about right. Absolutely enormous. The sculptures up near the ceiling didn’t look that large from so far away but one of them, I was told, was holding a little cross in her hand. From that distance, it didn’t seem very big at all, but the cross was actually a good deal taller than any of us. Sadly, I don’t think I got a picture of that, but if I had you only might be able to understand how gigantic that sculpture would have to be.

I kept losing the group, which got pretty frustrating. The ear piece for the radio wasn’t making the situation any better. It just kept itching like crazy. Basically, I just stopped paying attention to what Vig was saying and kept taking pictures. Flash doesn’t work in St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s just too big and flashes only travel about fourteen feet or so, thus making them entirely useless. I tried using it a few times for things that were closer, but even that proved pretty useless. This made things extremely difficult since, without a flash, my pictures tend to come out pretty blurry. Really, it’s that way with most digital cameras, but this place was swarming with people so, not only was I getting bumped into a lot, but I also had to hold the camera up above everyone’s heads. Thus, it was pretty hard to hold the camera steady, so I got a lot of blurry pictures and ended up taking a lot of doubles, just in case one of the pictures would reveal itself to be too blurry when I got home and uploaded them onto my computer. Some of them are, as misfortune would have it, and not all of them have doubles, so we’ll just have to live with the blurriness.





I think it was here that I was trying to take a picture of one of the chapels and a little car thing almost ran me over. I didn’t realize it was coming because my back was turned to it and I was pretty engrossed in getting my picture. So I was kind of shooed by one of the priests. Then I was almost run over by it again when it was coming back from whatever it had been doing in that chapel. That was after I was taking pictures of another chapel and a priest came up and shook his finger at me with a really sour look on his face. At least, I think he was aiming that at me. There was at least one other person taking a picture there, so who knows, but I found it mildly amusing for some reason. I walked away, of course, and stopped taking pictures there. I wasn’t about to do anything to disrespect one of the priests. It’s still a church, after all, and a very old one at that. Better to respect the rules or not go in at all.

Anyway, I won’t continue on about St. Peter’s Basilica. I had a very frustrating time in there overall so I’m not going to spend much time gushing about how beautiful and gigantic everything was. You get that sentence right there to describe it and pictures. This is only the first place we visited and look at how much time I’ve already spent on it.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention looking out into the Vatican from the museum and the fact that I found out—why I didn’t know this before I find very strange—that the Vatican isn’t part of Italy. It’s its own state, which is probably why it’s called the Vatican State. Once again, why I didn’t know this before is kind of weird. It’s common knowledge after all. Meh, well, I miss things like that sometimes. Heck, I remember when I suggested how wonderful it would be if cars just had a button you could push to keep the car going at a certain speed. Yes, that’s right, I thought up cruise control. Somehow I had gone through life having no idea that it existed. So, yeah, there’s your proof that things that are common knowledge have trouble sticking to my brain.

But I also found out that part of Arizona is actually part of the Vatican State. Apparently, there’s an observatory here that belongs to the Vatican. Who would’ve thought, eh?

After that, we saw the line I mentioned at the beginning of this entry and walked through it to get out and go into one of the shops. This was after Vig pointed out the window in the palace that the Pope usually addresses people from. Well, both of them. Though one is in St. Peter’s Basilica and isn’t used that often, mainly just for when the Pope is first chosen and goes to address the people. The window would be hard to pick out in a picture anyway since there’s nothing really significant looking about it. So, meh.

I didn’t get anything at the shop, though I was toying with the idea of buying a rosary. I decided against it, though, since I only knew I wanted to buy at least some little thing here in Italy but not what exactly it was that I wanted yet. So then we moved on to the Colosseum via the bus.

To be continued...