Day 3: Rome

550 stairs and a little bit of claustrophobia later, I stood on top of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican. How did I end up there? Let me tell you a story...

Using every ounce of willpower I had, I woke up and dressed at at 8am (Don't judge, ok? I have jet lag issues!). I put on some new pin-strip wool dress pants, my favorite dress shirt, and a tie. Today, I was going to Roman Catholicism's most revered sites and I wanted to make sure I didn't offend anyone.

Finding the metro closed for repairs, I walked to Vatican City - its only a mile or two away. I hopped into the line that said "St. Peter's Basilica" with oodles of other people and thought I'd be in in no time. Ha!

Remember that I said that I dressed up? Imagine my (moderate) surprise to find that most people were dressed very casually, the women were being constantly reminded to cover their shoulders and other exposed areas, and that the idea of what "sacred" implies was completely lost. And these were by and large not Americans! I will spare the reader of many further social or moral critique.

It took about two hours to finally reach the hidden ticket window. Then, you travel up the hundreds of stairs to the inside rim of the dome overlooking the interior of the basilica. Finally, many more stairs later up hallways diminishing at strange angles, you arrive at the pinnacle, the cupola. It was pretty cool. It was hard to stop thinking about how much my feet hurt though.

I made it to the interior of the basilica and looked around for a little while. I was on a tight time budget because I wanted to hit the Vatican Museums - which includes the Sistine Chapel - and an art exhibit on the life and works of Caravaggio and the Caravaggisti.

I hurried over to the Vatican Museums, got lost (of course) trying to find the Sistine Chapel. There is no photography allowed in the Sistine Chapel, which is fine by me. Any photo I could have taken would not have done it justice, nor would it have been nearly as good as what I can find online in 0.17 seconds (thanks, Google).

The rest of the Vatican Museums were really interesting as well. Here are a few favs:

To the right you can see an angel taking shape. This was the model used by Bernini to cast bronze statues: terra cotta, wood, and wire.

Directly below you will see a (rather poor) photo of a master Caravaggio work, The Entombment:













Last, but certainly not least, I stumbled upon the Frabergé egg. Yes, that one...from Ocean's 12. It was very cool. All I have to say after seeing the dozen or so jewelled eggs the Romanovs commissioned is that Czars really knew how to do Easter eggs.





My legs felt like they were cramping up ever since I arrived at St. Peter's earlier in the day, so mozzied on over to the gellateria with the soy-based gellato, read my book on the steps to the fountain in front of the Pantheon, had a pizza for dinner, and came back to the hotel a little early.

That's okay though because tomorrow I'm up early for a new adventure in a new place. That's right, I'm up bright and early to catch a train to Pisa for the weekend.

Ciao!