Travels: May 2011

Steve and I were both rather parched after our visit to the Vatican. Water in Italy, as everything else, is rather expensive, and they don't offer it from the tap as they do in France, consequently, we'd only split a small bottle at lunch. Finding a water fountain was a blessed relief.

Our next stop was Piazza Navona, which in many ways is reminiscent of Place du Tertre, Montmartre because of all the street artists.

Steve shot an interview inside the Palace Pamphii earlier in the week. He said that there were covered floor-to-ceiling bookcases in at least five rooms that were all filled with rare books. They were just sitting there as part of the family fortune. Such a shame that they were covered, and he couldn't see them.

We headed to the Pantheon next. It's amazing that something so old could still be that well intact. This is the original that the one in Paris is modeled after.

By this point, we were very eager for our daily gelato, so we returned to the gelato shop by the Trevi Fountain. I went out on a limb and ventured beyond my typical mint/chocolate combination and tried the orange chocolate. Wow! It was amazing!

Considering we'd already walked several miles and seen quite a bit, we decided to call it a day and head back to the hotel. While I was loath to miss anything in Rome, there was only so much we could pack into one day. It had been a lovely mini-break.

Monday morning, we headed for the Vatican in hopes of beating the crowds. Fat chance. We eventually made it into the walls of the museum and stood in line a bit longer. I don't know if it was because we were approaching Holy Week or John Paul II was going to be beatified in a few weeks, or if it's always like that, but the place was packed. We didn't really know what to expect, so we just followed signs for the Sistine Chapel, following the full path. There was a shorter track we could've taken, but we wanted to see the museum. Besides, we had no idea how huge the museum actually was. We kept walking and following signs for the Sistine Chapel and then kept walking some more. Finally, we reached a long hallway and figured that we were making our approach.

This picture give a glimpse of the throng of people surrounding us. It also shows just how incredibly opulent the museum is. Pretty much every surface was covered by paintings, tapestries, sculptures, mosaics, or elaborate carvings. And this was just one, very long hallway among several.

Needless to say, we didn't arrive at the Sistine Chapel at the end of this hall as expected. We just kept being funneled through ornate room after elaborate room. This is another famous one--the Rafael Room.

We eventually walked through a passage that I affectionately referred to as the Benjamin Moore room because it was painted in a generic off-white shade, and I didn't think I'd ever been so happy to be in a boring room in all my life. When we finally reached the Sistine Chapel, there were so many people that the attendants didn't even try to stop people from taking pictures. If seeing David and his painting Holy Family didn't solidify in our minds the genius of Michelangelo, this did.

The perspective was so amazing on some of the paintings, particularly the ones around the perimeter of the upper walls, that it looked like they were painted sculptures. There's something about the way he painted the sheen of the fabric that made it look silky. Incredible. After we passed through the chapel, there was still quite a bit of the museum to walk through.

Steve had been raving about the pasta bolognese he had eaten at a little restaurant earlier in the week, so he took me back there for a quick lunch before we walked through St. Peter's Basilica. The bolognese and homemade pasta was indeed something to write home about. Yum.

I do need to pause a minute to discuss the dining experience in Italy. We definitely didn't eat like Italians. For one thing, we would've gained fifteen pounds in the course of a few days. For another, we couldn't afford to. If we ordered a salad and/or appetizer, a pasta course, a meat course, and then a dessert and/or coffee, we would've been rolling back to our hotel not only because our size would have allowed us to tuck and roll but because we wouldn't have been able to afford cab fare. Instead, we ate like Americans on the go--quickly.

St. Peter's was also incredible. Steve had spent a lot of time there earlier in the week, taking pictures and touring the Vatican caves below, which is not open to the public. Some of these pictures were taken before I arrived.