Our road leads to Rome...

 Well, we have left beautiful Scotland and arrived in Italy. We arrived at our hotel around 12:00 pm and had to use our non-existent Italian vocabulary to haggle with the man at the front desk. He had no idea if we even had a reservation and had to be walked through the check-in via phone by the manager. After all was said and done, we actually were set up in a nice room, and come morning, the neighborhood looked less sketchy. Everything looks better in the light of day. Anyway, you really didn’t have to know about that. Sorry if I have already bored you...

Moving on. We were only in Rome for one day, so we decided to begin with Vatican City. When we got off the metro, we were bombarded with salesmen trying to sell a Vatican tour. We listened to the 10-minute spiel and decided that it was actually a good deal (it allowed us to cut the lines for the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica which were a mile long at the time).  The tour lasted for about 3 hours and we were joined by a host of just lovely American tourists (I am being sarcastic here). I will make my case later for why I am bashing my own kind.

We started with an explanation of the Vatican itself. The Vatican is its own country; it’s boundaries being the stonewall that encircles it. *Side note- have any of you seen a Walk to Remember? If you have, then do you remember that really cheesy part where cute Shane West takes Mandy Moore to the state line and he fulfills her dream to be two places at once? Yea, it definitely crossed my mind to stand with one half of my body in Italy and the other in the Vatican…loser status achieved. *End side note.

The stonewall surrounding the Vatican

When I came back to reality, Monica (our tour guide) was explaining the story of the Swiss Guard. Pope Julius II was under attack and a couple of the Vatican guards, who happened to be of Swiss nationality, died protecting him. He honored their sacrifice by decreeing that the Pope’s guard must always be of Swiss nationality. We caught a brief glimpse of them, but they weren’t in their normal uniform. Dang. Below is a picture of the lovely Swiss Guard uniform, designed by Michelangelo. 

Photo taken from Google image

The next part of our tour took us to St. Peter’s Square. It was designed by Bernini and gives you a spectacular view of St. Peter’s Basilica. There is an Egyptian obelisk at the center of the square that happens to be one of the few originals still left in Rome. At the top of the obelisk are a cross and the papal coat of arms. Inside the cross is a relic of the cross that Jesus was crucified on. How they found that, I do not know…

St. Peter's Square- the Egyptian obelisk in the foreground and St. Peter's Basilica in the background. The woman with the microphone in her face is our tour guide, Monica. 

Jake and I in St. Peter's Square

Our next stop was the Sistine Chapel. Every inch of the chapel is covered with beautiful artwork by dozens of famous artists, the most well known being Michelangelo. Nobody is allowed to take pictures inside the chapel because it has a negative effect on the artwork, but nevertheless, there were a host of American tourists not only taking pictures, but taking flash photography. We were reminded about a dozen times that it is forbidden. I'm sure many people were taking pictures, but the Americans were just so blatantly obvious about it. Sheesh, at least turn your flash off. 

Anywho, Jake and I decided that we liked the Last Judgment more than the ceiling itself. All of the figures in the Last Judgment were originally painted nude (no, that is not why we liked it), but the Pope’s Master of Ceremonies, Biagio da Cesena, was offended by having to look at their “shameful parts.” Michelangelo was ordered to cover these parts and indeed he did. But, to get back at the Master of Ceremonies, he painted a figure of Cesena in Hell being strangled by a snake. He also painted the snake biting his “private parts.” When Cesena asked the Pope to order Michelangelo to remove it, the Pope answered, “I have sway in the lives of men, but I have no dominion over the souls in Hell.” It’s great to know that Michelangelo (and the Pope for that matter) had a good sense of humor.

Photo taken from Google image- image of Biagio da Cesena by Michelangelo

Our last stop on the tour was St. Peter’s Basilica. St. Peter’s is the largest Catholic Church in the world and the tallest building in Rome. I felt like the size of the Basilica wasn’t truly apparent until I walked inside and was immediately reduced to the size of an ant. The splendor of the St. Peter's engulfs you and really leaves you in a state of awe. This was the second time that the same set of American tourists didn't cease to amaze me. Before we entered the St. Peter's, we had to give our headsets back. One of the tourists went to hand his back and that is when he decided that it was a good time to tell the tour guide that his headset had been broken the whole time. Hmmm, that sounds like a lovely waste of money and time to me. Whatever, to each his own...

This shows the altar in St. Peter's Basilica. It is covered by a large bronze sculpture that happens to be the largest work of pure bronze in the world. Underneath the bronze altarpiece is the tomb of St. Peter. We weren't able to see the tomb because their was an event later that day and we were in a little bit of a rush. 

Moving on...Michelangelo’s famous Pietà is inside St. Peter’s Basilica. Pietà means pity in Italian, and describes Christian art that shows Mary holding the dead body of Jesus. Monica told us a funny story about it during our tour. It was immensely popular when Michelangelo first unveiled it. People would wait in line for hours just to catch a glimpse. As time went on, a rumor was started that it wasn’t Michelangelo that sculpted it, but it was his biggest rival that actually completed it. Naturally, Michelangelo was a little irked, so he broke into St. Peter’s during the middle of the night and chiseled his name into the backside of the sculpture. You can’t see his name on the back though because only just recently the sculpture was placed behind a bulletproof screen. This was because some lunatic who was under the delusion that he was Michelangelo and climbed onto the sculpture and tore off Mary’s arm. Don’t worry, the Pietà has been restored and looks exactly the same. I thought that was a funny anecdote though.

Michelangelo's Pietà

We spent the remainder of the day walking around the city and just enjoying the sites. We had some yummy pizza for dinner and tried Grappa, extremely strong Italian liquor. Click here to see more pictures of Rome. Below are a few from the rest of our day! Ciao!

Mary in Piazza Navona 

                                              

Jake in the Roman Forum with Trajan's Column in the background. 

The Roman Forum and Trajan's Column