I’m finally getting over the pooper problems brought on by Italian pizza (yeah, go figure) and I got up pretty early to beat the rush to Vatican City. Unfortunately, everyone and their baptized pets had the same idea. When I got there the queue swung around three of the four walls that surround Vatican City. So, I did what I really didn’t want to have to do…I signed up with another tour. The tour was pretty pricey but it bumped me straight to the front of the line and let me into everything I wanted to get in to. Unforunately, the Pope wasn't there so I wasn't able to see the Pious one. However, I did get to see many of the dead popes. There is a catacomb in the basement that houses many of their bodies.
The most interesting part of the tour took place outside in a courtyard before we entered the Sistine Chapel. The tour stopped here, we were told, because the Chapel is still a “working” chapel and that meant no talking within it. So, our guide explained to us stuff about the Chapel out here. He told us that it took Michelangelo Buonarroti (yeah, I was surprised, too, but that’s his last name…I thought it’d be something like DiCarpio or something…never heard of Buonarroti before) four years - between 1508 and 1512 - to paint the ceiling of the chapel. When the roof was renovated it took the Nippon Television Network Corporation of Japan 7 years to restore it. In return for the cost of the $4.2 million the Nippon Television Network was given exclusive photographic and filming rights. Thus, we were given two warnings: 1. Don’t take any pictures inside the Chapel and 2. Don’t talk while inside the Chapel. Well, when I got into the Sistine Chapel, it was pretty busy. I’d say there were at least 250 people crammed into this small chapel. And everyone was taking pictures. Plus, the din of people talking was louder than a large pack of kids hanging out inside the local McDonalds. Periodically, in a very annoying manner, one of the five or six guards within the Chapel would loudly “ssshhhhhh” the crowd to quiet them down; It only worked for a few seconds before the noise got back up to its normal buzz again. The interesting part is that I got in trouble for taking pictures in the Chapel. While 250 other people talked loudly in God’s Holy Chapel and took pictures (some of them had cameras with tripods and telephoto lenses that even a highly visually impaired individual could make out) of the walls owned by Nippon TV, I got caught taking pictures with my small camera – possibly the smallest digital camera ever made by a major camera manufacturer: the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T7. My reprimand, you ask? Well, getting in trouble within the walls of something so sacrosanct as the Sistine Chapel you’d think it would have involved snakes, weird tasseled gadgets, or maybe a burning goat or two. However, my punishment was a loud bark in Italian from the guard before he took off to do whatever guards do after barking. This is a picture of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. No Gnome, though. That woulda given me away, I think.
After I left Vatican City, I had intended to visit some catacombs. (Nothing like some dead bodies.) However, I kinda got lost; I walked through a weird field full of scraggily dogs and big men lifting weights (yep, nothing like weight lifting in a field out in nowhere) for about 2 hours before getting to the other side. I’m not kidding when I say I was pretty scared until I got out. Unbelievably, though, I walked through it again to get back to the metro on the other side. But during my lost meanderings I found the church Domine Quo Vadis. (Domine Quo Vadis means “Lord, Where the heck are you going” or something close to that. It’s the question Peter – or was his name Paul? – asked Jesus and Jesus replied that he was running from crucifixion.) In this church is a print of Jesus’ feet in marble. Neat yet weird. This is a picture of Dwarf next to Jesus’ feet prints within white marble. Available soon on the home shopping network. Just in time for Christmas.
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