Eat, Drink, See, Do....: All Roman, all the time!

Wonderfully, thankfully, surprisingly and fortunately our Rome hostel was everything I was hoping for. Our room had ceramic tile floors, a Juliet balcony, exquisite cotton bedding and a next-door-neighbour who plays beautiful piano in the afternoon. It was the perfect base for our biggest city – and I cannot recommend it highly enough.

Feeling a bit run down, Lucy and I took Roma very slowly in the beginning. So, not much happened in the first two days except me somehow spending E15 (that’s $NZ30 people!) talking to my mother for 7 minutes… although it was very nice to hear her voice.

By the third day it was time to put our tourist shoes back on and take on the city. I had decided the Sistine Chapel was first on the list, so (believing everything I had heard about the long waiting times) we got up at 6am to start queuing outside at 8am. Our queue started moving at 10am and we finally got in at 11am - phew!

Having made it inside comparitively early, we weren't in any real rush and could take the time to explore the collections. Our first stop in the Egyptian rooms was fairly cool and unusual. Not only were there various sorts of sarcophagi, organ jars and tomb ornaments, but I got to see an unwrapped mummy. It was very creepy.

Further into the classical collections it started getting a little more ordinary – not least because Americans are walking around eating food and dropping crumbs. The weirdest thing is that some statues have plaster leaves over their genitals. I heard a guide say this is Pope Benedict’s idea, and it seems an unnecessary step to me – especially when the colour and texture ruins the unity of the piece:

Even stranger is that not all willies are so censored – I can only speculate as to why, but it does seem to be only the sculptures that are less… shall we say, grand… that are untouched.

Most people forego the initial part of the complex, so moving on from the Greek and Roman wonders is the first time we really struck a crowd. But, from the start of the galleries until the Chapel at the end it is an unremitting lemming line. Careful not to step onto anyone’s heels, and cautious of all the tourists behind me, I managed to sneak in a shot from the map gallery. This room was one of my favourites (yep, that's gold on the ceiling):

Slowly but surely, the art gets more and more solemn, the light gets gloomier, and the air thickens with anticipation as we journey into the bowels of the Pope’s private quarters. The Raphael Rooms are four communicating parlours painted by the master over ten years until his death in 1520. The paintings are astonishingly good, and massive – I was so lucky my non-flash photos show them up:

After almost three hours of touristing it was actually a relief to enter the Chapel. Up until then I was expecting to enter a cathedral – so I couldn’t believe how small it was and (consequently) how full:

(I wonder if anyone else in that photo is thinking how ironic it is that the Chapel staff use loudspeakers to inform everyone to be quiet?)

I think that, in this modern age, the quality of the paintings is somewhat lost because people are used to seeing realistic images of people (e.g. in photos) – one needs to actively pay attention to Michelangelo’s groundbreaking perfections in draperies, anatomy, perspectives and shading to understand why the Chapel is truly great.

After a few minutes trying to be contemplative amongst the bustle, Lucy and I decided to leave. We left through a gate not unlike the one in the library at Alcatraz only to discover I had left my journal somewhere along the route. We had a ‘fun’ time trying to explain to a billion security personnel what was lost and eventually they just plopped us at the beginning of the galleries and told me to find it myself – which meant Lucy and I got to see the whole thing again.

We emerged triumphantly with journal in hand and (blinking furiously from the sunlight) decided to grab lunch before we melted. After that we headed around the corner to see St Peter’s Basilica:

This was a fairly average tourist spot, and since the queue to see inside the church was enormouuuuuus, we just sat in the sun for a bit before wandering off for more fun. There were heaps of shops around and I fought hard the temptation to buy my very own Pope: