First Whole Day in Rome (Jan 18 '08)

[Okay, just a little context for those of you who don't know why I'm in Rome: I am spending two weeks (minus these three days in Rome) in England working with Express Worldwide. This is my third trip in the last year. Ben and Zoe Kirby own a few Express Worldwide franchises and also work at the head office, and we've become good friends over the past year. Anyway, Ben and I decided that on my next trip we'd try to do a quick trip to Rome. Turns out that we were both actually really serious about it. So Ben, Zoe, and I booked some cheap plane tickets and a hotel, and here we are in Rome.]

Ben, Zoe, and I arrived in Rome last night on a very low-fair Irish airline called RyanAir. The flights were dirt cheap, but not too comfortable. The seats didn't recline, and my knees touched the seat in front of me most of the time. The flight lasted about 2.5 hours, but there was a warning light that came on just as we were about to take off, so we sat on the tarmac for an extra half hour while the engineer came in and just unscrewed the light bulb.* That's one way to get a warning light to go off. We're staying at a decent hotel in Rome called the Hotel Milton Roma. The room I have is a bit smaller that I had expected, with the bedroom having a twin bed, and the bedroom not even being twice as wide as the bed itself. But it's pretty decent. I can't complain. Or at least I shouldn't. :-)

[* okay, I'm not sure what he did to get it to turn off. There's a chance that he really fixed the source of the problem.]

We found a little hole-in-the-wall pizza shop down the street last night and decided to just grab a slice and come back to the hotel. Unfortunately, my pizza's crust was burnt and black on the bottom, and Zoe and Ben had a piece of meat on their pizza with a big vein in it. They said it looked like a human vein. But that's silly--how can you tell for sure it's not a monkey vein?

We spent the day touring Rome today. Since we wanted to make sure that to see the Vatican on this trip, we went there first.

We bought an all-day Metro pass for the subway for 4 euros [euro-dollars]. That turns out to be the best deal in all of Italy so far. Here's a short video clip of our metro ride. A guy came on to the subway and started playing his accordian. You'll hear a bit of it. But he was just amazingly good. I was impressed enough to give him 2 euros in his collection can, which is a lot of money for a cheapskate like me.



I had read Angels and Demons by Dan Brown, so I thought I kind of knew what to expect at the Vatican. Well, I was wrong. The Vatican is so much bigger that I possibly could have imagined. And everything there is so lavishly decorated, it is simply mind-blowing. It has to have the greatest collection of art in the world. Simply incredible.

The picture above makes everything look pretty small. It isn't. Believe me.






So I doubt that I can give you a feel for the size of this place, even from the pictures that I'm going to post here. The people who built this place must have been giants, needing a lot of head room. The dome of Saint Peter's Basilica, a massively huge chapel in Vatican City, is 137 meters high. That's significantly taller than a football (yes, American football) field is long, people.

Anyway, Saint Peter's Basilica was the first place we visited, and we spent nearly two hours there. We paid 5 euros for an "audio guide", which was basically an MP3 player with 20+ tracks on it that you would play as you walked around the chapel. The audio lasted an hour and 15 minutes, but it still only skimmed the surface of what was there. There were just loads of statues, murals, altars, busts, etc. from artists through the ages. I can't imagine how many man-hours of work has gone into this building, but it must be well over a million.

The image above is the bronze Baldachin that sits directly underneath the dome of St. Peter's, and directly over the place were Peter is supposedly buried. Peter's body was supposedly found years after he died in a tomb that was inscribed "Peter is here." Under the Baldachin is a spiraling staircase that goes to the lower floor, and on the way down, and behind the wall, lay the supposed bones of Peter.

After St. Peter's, we went underneath the chapel to see where a bunch of the popes are buried. And all I can say is, I hope that marble makes a nice bed, because that's what they're all sleeping on at the moment. (Note to Sidney: I want a marble coffin when I die. Make it 4.5 feet wide, 3.5 feet tall, and 18 feet long. And have them carve some nice words about me in the side. Oh, and also have them carve a marble replica of me into the top of it, except have them make me look trim and strong.)

Well, there's too much to show, and my pictures didn't all turn out that great, so I'll skip on to the Sistine Chapel. We had to pay 14 euros to get in to the "Vatican Museum" portion of the Vatican, through a separate entrance in the wall that surrounds the Vatican city/country. We followed the arrows that pointed the way to the Sistene Chapel, but probably walked almost a kilometer through various long hallways and rooms before arriving there.

You're not supposed to take photographs of the Sistine Chapel, but fortunately for you, I accidentally left my camera running in video mode as I passed through the room.



Dang, I hate it when I do that.

So, how did I like the Vatican? It's a great piece of living history. The artwork is incredible. The experience is one that I wouldn't have missed and am grateful for. I now need to go back and read Angels and Demons again so I can actually understand the places Dan Brown talks about. But I am avoiding the question. The answer is, it was a way cool experience, but it was not spiritual. It was WAY awe-inspiring, but not spiritually inspiring. Anyway, that's just my personal experience, and not necessarily anybody else's.

We also saw the Pantheon, which is a very ancient "Roman Temple of all the gods." I guess they were trying to hedge their bets just so they didn't tick off any of the gods. Anyway, I think I'll link you to Wikipedia's article on the Pantheon instead of showing you my terrible photos.

After all of the walking, my feet were sore and I was starving. We stopped on the way back from the Pantheon in a little Mediterranean-style Italian restaurant on the street and had dinner. It was a refreshingly good change from the meal that we had last night. The servers were great, and the food was also very good.



Well, we'll hopefully be visiting the Colosseum, the Forum, Piazza Navona, the Spanish Steps, and hopefully the Church of the Bones tomorrow, if I can find it. And hopefully another good little Italian restaurant. So stay tuned. I'll probably be back to post more stuff tomorrow night.