Monday: I woke up early today but actually got myself ready right away. I was one of the first ones down to breakfast, which was great because I'm a slow eater- which you probably are already aware of. Anyways, I had the same yummy breakfast again: orange juice, french toast with honey and banana slices, and a caffé latté. Unfortunately, not everyone in the group was able to have such a good morning and we ended up waiting on a few to finish their breakfast. When we were finally all ready we left the hostel and hurried to the nearest métro. Our tour guide from last night had told us that he does a Vatican museums/Sistine Chapel tour for a reduced price and that he could meet us at a certain métro stop at 10a to walk together to Vatican City to do the tour. We were all over this because you often have to get to the Vatican museums around 6:30a simply to avoid waiting for 2 to 3 hours; you will always have to wait some amount of time. But with a tour guide you skip the lines and go right in. We definitely didn't want to miss out on this opportunity and we also had had a really good experience with our tour guide so far. So we had to push it to the métro in order to not miss him. We finally got there and ran down stairs, pushed through the crowds of people, stood in line, bought our little one euro tickets, got all six of us through the turnstiles, and just made it in time for the train we needed. It was a human salad inside the train so it was really difficult to read our maps and find out which stop we needed. Fortunately, a woman had been listening to our conversation and picked up on the fact that we wanted to go to the Vatican. She was able to tell us the stop that is closest to the Vatican and we got off there at 9:50a: 10 minutes before Greg (our tour guide) was planning to start walking to the Vatican!
However, when we got to the top of the stairs leaving the métro, we took one look around and realized he was not there. We walked up and down the street a little, crossed the street to the métro that goes the opposite direction, and had no luck. We had no idea where he was and we were running out of time; he had promised to wait for up to 10 minutes extra because he knows that the métro can be difficult, but how were we supposed to locate him?! We suddenly felt like idiots for not getting his phone number. We decided to split into two groups of three; one would get back on the métro and take it farther down and the other (the one I was in) would [power] walk to the next métro stop. Well, we did that and no luck. We had a minor epiphany on the way, though, that we had indeed gotten off at the wrong stop. However, by then it was 10:20a and we knew there was no way he was still waiting around, wherever he was. I'm bummed to say that we never saw Greg again; hopefully he wasn't waiting for us very long.
We met back up at our original métro stop after that and just shook it off- there was no point in getting frustrated about what had happened. So, we walked ourselves to Vatican City and hoped that we would be able to find another tour guide with prices as good as Greg's. At least the tour guides at the big attractions in Rome aren't hard to find; they find you. We had been standing outside of Vatican City for no more than 10 seconds before a guy came up to us rattling off all of the perks of his company's tours. It was five euros more than Greg's but we decided to go for it, thinking we wouldn't be able to find better prices when we were buying the tour on the grounds of the site. A little I.D. check, money exchange, and 10 minute introduction, and before we knew it, we were in line to go inside... VATICAN CITY IN ROME, ITALY! WHAT?!!!
That's Vatican City behind that wall!!
=D
Waiting to go in!
OMG!!!!!!
The last step before becoming one of the coolest people ever: GO UP!
The grounds of Vatican City!
The first phase of the tour was to walk through the main museums. The Vatican has one of the richest collections of art in the world, and it certainly is the richest country in the world. Gosh this was such an elegant place to spend a little time today.
Some of the art we saw in the museums:
The first of many breathtaking ceilings
;)
Believe me, from where we finished our tour, this is nothing
;)
So we were walking through all of this glorious, Ancient and Renaissance era art and listening to our tour guide through little walkie-talkies when we arrived in a tiny, circular room. There wasn't much to it; mostly it had a really pretty ceiling, and my friends captured a good pic of me appreciating it.
There were benches in the room so it was almost like a rest stop where you can decide if you want to head back through any of the museums or go over to Saint Peter's basilica. But then..... you see a small sign across the way. It looks like every other sign you've seen in the museums so far; it's the same in every way... except for the name: CAPPELLA SISTINA
We were there. I couldn't breathe. My heart started pounding. I felt like I was either about to get married to a man I've never met, birth my first child, or land a plane full of children in the middle of the ocean. "I don't think I can do it," is all I could say to myself. But you know what? I did. I did it and I am truly a changed person because of it.
MASTERPIECES OF THE SITINE CHAPEL, BY MICHELANGELO:
"Original Sin and Banishment from the Garden of Eden," "Creation of Eve," "Creation of Adam," "Separation of Land from Sea," "Creation of the Sun, Moon, and Plants," "Separation of Light from Darkness,"
and ME beneath them
"The Last Judgement" (credit for picture goes to Chantalle)
"Creation of Adam" (thanks again to Chantalle)
Game over. Vacation done. I had seen enough. Honestly, what more was there to see? I had just been inside the most famous room in the world, staring with my own two eyes at the most famous frescoes in our history. Me, Samantha; Samantha Christensen from Modesto, California; she has looked at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that was decorated by Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni. I still can't get my head around this new reality.
Fortunately, though, I did not follow my thought process that there was no more to see, because it ended up not being so... Saint Peter's Basilica is, categorically, something to see. But I'm getting ahead of myself-
After the Sistine Chapel, we walked slowly through a few more of the Vatican Museums. They had all become massively unimpressive by now, but this is beside the point. We strolled through a museum of Ancient Egyptian art that was pretty cool, and we also were able to go into a museum that was dedicated solely to the works of Raphaël. Raphaël was a very important artist during the Renaissance and I recognized at least one of the paintings in his gallery from my art history class. I found this to also be a theme throughout my entire week in Italy and it enhanced my experience ten-fold. It is so the coolest thing ever when you walk into a museum and recognize the works in there. It is even cooler when you can remember specific things you've learned about them and can share them with others.
In the Ancient Egypt museum:
statue of Queen Tuya
statue of the cat Goddess Bastet, with the mummy of the animal inside
In the Raphaël room:
"School of Athens" (totally knew this one!)
What an incredible experience! We were thoroughly famished after this very long and very full morning so we headed out to find us some Italian grub afterwards. We found a place that had different varieties of flatbread pizza and different pastas. I decided to be a piggish American and order a bowl of lasagna AND a whole slice of pizza. Naturally, I also had a dessert: my first taste of real Italian gelato, and it was made with Nutella!!
Very, VERY excited for my gelato
We were, at this point, six of the coolest people in the world. But we felt that this wasn't good enough and decided to become saint-like: we walked ourselves over to Saint Peter's Basilica. This is yet another piece of art that I learned about in my art history class, and I'll never forget what my teacher taught us about the shape of the courtyard: there are two curved, columned structures on either side that are meant to resemble the arms of God reaching out in an embrace. What she told us is that the proper way to visit the basilica is by walking straight towards it from the center street. It can easily be reached by walking through the columns on the side but then you miss the effect of being "welcomed" by God to the most luxurious building that has probably ever been created. The basilica is "new" compared to its Ancient Roman counterparts around the city, but it is built almost entirely by old materials. I mentioned to you before that the palace on Palatine Hill doesn't stand anymore because it was torn down to provide materials for the Vatican. This is true for a lot of ancient structures/buildings; anything that was made out of that famous Roman marble was taken apart. The stunning marble floors inside Saint Peter's, the marble walls, the gold details, all of it is technically ancient. And it almost collapsed me to my knees when I walked inside. Surely, it was the first thing in my whole nine weeks here so far to move me all the way to tears.
We can see it but I refused to look more than once; I wanted the proper effect!
Wow. Just... wow.
Sooooooo happy!
I love this picture. You can really see the giganticness of this structure.
The Pope's window
The interior. Believe you me, if you haven't been here yourself, you have never seen anything like it.
Michelangelo's "Pièta." Another thing I studied in my art history class, and the thing that really got me going.
These pictures are pathetic, so you know. This is truly a place that cannot be shared with others by telling them about it or trying to show them it without bringing them to it. It is something that can only be experienced personally by coming to see it for yourself. And I highly recommend you all do just that. It was something, for me, that I would like to bring everyone I love to marvel at someday. By the way, I took a really great 3 minute video of the interior but it's too big to post on here (gallery.me.com/ranthy). I hope you'll watch it because, while the video is also lame compared to the reality of what I was trying to record, I watched it again and it captured very well my impression of the place while I was in it. For one, I feel like you can hear some emotion in my voice while I'm talking. Two, I don't talk for most of it, and that is really because I completely forgot that I was taking a video. I just could focus on nothing; that place truly dazzles the human mind.
After our experiences inside, all six of us unanimously agreed that we were done for the day. It was early evening and was still light out but we had no desire to do anything else. We wanted to go sit down somewhere, enjoy a long dinner, talk, tell stories, and just let the magnificence of what we had done today sink in and be absorbed. We headed back to our hostel after that because it was too early for dinner. But that was okay, we were able to just chill in our room for an hour or so, talking and goofing off and I wrote in my journal for a while. When we were at that point where our silliness was taking over our behavior, we decided it was time for dinner. We headed back to the restaurant that we ate at on our first night in Rome because it was just down the street from our hostel. We had bread in olive oil and vinegar, red wine, and I had spinach and ricotta raviolis in tomato sauce. On top of that, I had a small tart that was nothing more than a shortbread type of crust filled with Nutella. We got to the point that we were floating, and decided that tonight was the night to use our "free welcome drink" cards from the front desk. I went to the bar with a couple of the girls just as the bartender lined up about 20 free shots of tequila for everyone who was present. *He also spilled a line of some sort of alcohol on the counter and lit it on fire and that was really cool. (Can you tell that I'm not 21 yet??)* So we had our free tequila, then I used my ticket and had another free White Russian. I seem to have good luck with that drink- it is very delicious and has been free every time I've ever ordered it. After that we danced a little but mostly just hung out; people weren't really dancing so we looked kind of lame. I used the time to borrow an iPad from the front desk and was able to send an e-mail to my mom that I was having a great time and was available. No sooner than I had sent that, she called my phone through Skype and I got to tell my family all about the things I had seen today and how impressive I found them all to be. We talked for something like 45 minutes and it put me in just that much more of a good mood. When we said bye, I headed up to the room, took a shower, and basically just went right to bed. I think this day might end up going in my collection of "best days of my life."
