Visiting the Vatican

Happy New Year!

More from my Italy trip...

Wednesday, December 10, 2008

On this day of our Italy trip, we were mostly focused on seeing the Vatican museums and St. Peter's Cathedral. We got up relatively early, and took some photos from our room.









Then we headed out on our way. We picked up food-type stuff to eat for breakfast and lunch at a supermarket on our way to the subway. From there, we headed towards the Vatican museums. Except that we got a little lost on the way. There are only two Metro lines in Rome -- A and B. They cross at the Termini and only at the Termini. So, as we were taking line A in, I asked Nick, "do we change at the Termini?" He said yes, so we knew that we needed line B. When we got to the Termini, Nick said that we needed to figure out which way to go on line B. I saw a stop in one direction called "San Paolo's," and I figured that was it. We get there, we get out of the station, and we see no Vatican. Finally Nick figures out that we're at the totally wrong stop, and I have all my wires crossed, since St. Paul's is the big cathedral in London and St. Peter's is the big cathedral in the Vatican. Whoops.

It turns out that Nick was the initial offender, though, for saying that we were supposed to switch at the Termini. We weren't. We were supposed to continue on line A at the Termini for a few more stops. So we have to get back on the B line, take it back to the Termini, switch over to the A line, get back on the A line, and take that towards the Vatican stops. By this point, we're both quite cranky because we haven't had breakfast.

We head straight towards the museum entrance, since I'm convinced that we won't be allowed to eat in the big square in front of St. Peter's (ever since seeing signs that we weren't allowed to back in St. Mark's Square in Venice, I've been paranoid). So we have to just stand near the museum entrance/exit area attempting to eat. Meanwhile, I'm convinced Nick's hands are filthy because he's touched absolutely everything in the subway. But we finally get a few bites of breakfast, and then it starts to rain. And then rain heavily. We have to go indoors to keep all our stuff from getting drenched, which means I have to throw out the last few bites of my sandwich. By the time we've actually entered the Vatican museums I'm fuming.



But eventually I wind myself down a bit, and we start to meander through the museums. We enter at the far end from the Sistine Chapel, and so meander through a lot of the galleries, since it looks like the Sistine Chapel will be towards the end of our walk through the museums.











At one point, we looked out the window of one of the galleries and saw a rainbow (it had stopped raining):



We also saw the gallery of historic maps housed in the Vatican, which was pretty cool.







From there, we were shepherded into the Raphael Rooms that precede the Sistine Chapel.



It was fairly dark, so hard to take good photos without the flash (a lot people were ignoring the "no flash" signs, but I was good). From there, we went into the Sistine Chapel itself. There, no photography was allowed at all (although once again a lot of people were ignoring that). It was neat. Nick disliked the practice of painting columns and other architectural features (rather than actually having them there), calling it "cheating." Whatever. Nick also claimed he had never seen the iconic creation of Adam by God, so we'll take him with a grain of salt. Meanwhile, we went through our guidebook which identified all the different scenes on the walls as well as the ceiling, which was fun.

From there, we were shepherded generally to the exit (this part was more defined since more people go through this part of the museum -- earlier, we were more on our own to wander wherever). The exit itself was cool; it was a spiral ramp down, like you sometimes get out of parking garages (but here you're on foot), but it was a double helix. I really liked it. I don't have my own photos of it, but you can see some online here.

After that, we wandered over to a nearby square that was having another Christmas market type event, and ate lunch there (I refused to eat lunch at the same place I had my breakfast debacle).

From there, we went into St. Peter's Square, where they were in the process of constructing a giant Christmas tree next to the Obelisk. This time, it was the operator of the Christmas tree decoration crane that was having a little nap.













After the square, we headed into the Basilica itself. Entry to the main part of the Basilica was free, but entry up to the dome at the top was 5 euros, so we decided to go into the main part and then investigate whether we wanted to go up to the dome or not.

We saw the Swiss Guard on our way in.



From there, we actually ended up entering into the Vatican Grotto (the signs were a little confusing), where a lot of popes are buried, before we went up into the main part of the Basilica. There were actually a lot of people lined up to see John Paul II's tomb.

Then we headed up into the main part of the Basilica, and wandered around that for a little bit.









After that, we headed back out. We considered going up to the dome, but it was starting to get dark, so we wouldn't have gotten that good a view by the time we were up there. We decided we might go back on a future day of the trip. Instead, we took some more pictures of St. Peter's Square at dusk.





From there, we headed back out on the A line to our room to get changed into slightly drier clothes and warm up a little bit (we had unlimited subway passes). From there, we headed back into town again to one of the places that Gianpaolo's friend had recommended the night before. To get there, first we had to take the subway, but then we had to take the tiny electric bus down a few more streets. But it worked out. The food was pretty good; it was an interesting mix of German and Italian food (which was a break from the constant pizza I had been eating). I ended up with something that was pork-like, I think. I liked it anyways.

After dinner, we wandered on foot to get a view of the Vittorio Emanuele monument at night, which was good. No cameras, though, so no photos. Instead we got some gelato at a shop nearby (constant theme).

From there, we managed to get a different bus back to a different subway station, but it ended up being very efficient. From there, it was back to our room.

Nick got some good view of Italy at night from our room's balcony (he enjoys challenging night photos because they let him play with his camera settings).







So that was a good day! The next day was Colosseum day (and Nick's birthday!). So stay tuned for that!

A Day in Florence

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

This was a pretty full day on our Italy trip. We got up just after 6 in the morning to make sure that we were packed, checked out of the hotel, and waiting for the Vaporetto by just after 7, since we estimated the boat from the Lido to the train station would take an hour, or a little more, and we thought we'd be boarding the train by 8:30. It turned out that we had plenty of time, and ended up waiting in the (freezing cold) Venice train station for about half an hour. We finally got a platform for our train and boarded.

The train ride itself was pretty uneventful, although the train was definitely the fanciest train I've been on. We even got assigned seats. It did a couple stops on the way out of Venice, and then, from there, travelled to Florence (its final destination was Rome). There were definitely some fields that we saw that were covered with, if not snow, then very thick frost. This time, Nick fell asleep on the train.



We eventually got to Florence just after 11, and took our luggage to the storage place in the train station. We ended up paying about 10 euros for three of our bags to be stored for the day. Then we meandered out.

We had a tiny guidebook listing about 25 cool sites in Venice, and so we wandered around trying to see as many as we could. We started by walking towards the Arno river and the Ponte Vecchio, a wide bridge with shops that crosses the river. (Well, actually we started with Nick navigating us into a bus terminal while speaking of his orienteering expertice, but then we turned around, fixed ourselves, and headed towards the Arno.) We wandered along to look at it all, and also took a look at the bridge. Most of the shops crossing it now are jewelry and watch shops.













Also, in one of the pictures above of the Ponte Vecchio up close, you can see an architectural feature that Nick and I were wondering about for a lot of our trip. The bridge, along with a lot of other buildings we saw while we were in Venice, had a lot of metal pieces on the outside that kind of looked like some sort of giant screw that would hold a beam in place. Nick said that those were sometimes used in building, but then normally covered up rather than left on the outside of a building -- but in Italy, they were all over the outsides of old buildings. Does anyone know anything about these? Just curious.

From there, we wandered over to the outside of the Uffizi and the Piazza della Signoria, and took some more photos, particularly of the Loggia dei Lanzi, an outside, open sculpture museum.









At this point, Nick and I were pretty hungry, but we didn't want to eat in the Piazza della Signoria because we knew that it was illegal to eat in St. Mark's Square back in Venice, so we decided to continue on until we found a good place to sit. Eventually we found a square with a Christmas market in front of a church (the Basilica of Santa Croce), and decided to eat on a bench there.



While we were eating, a group of American girls came up to the candy booth right behind us, and got very excited. It sold a LOT of really good-looking candy, and they made quite a production out of getting a lot of it. Meanwhile, I managed to refrain, but barely.

After lunch, we continued along, seeing a few minor churches that made it into the "top 25 sites," but nothing too interesting until we came to the Duomo, the cathedral church in Florence. This was pretty cool, and had very interesting white, green, and pink marble tiles covering the outside. So for a while, Nick and I just took pictures of the church itself, as well as its Campanile.





Then Nick and I decided to pay the 6 euros each so that we could go to the top of the Campanile and take a look at all of surrounding Florence. Of course, we later figured out that we could have also paid 6 euros to go inside the Duomo itself, which would have let us see all the cool stuff inside of it AND go up to its dome, which would have also given us a view around Florence, but whatever. We still had fun in the Campanile. My one complaint was that everywhere it was advertised that the Campanile had 412 steps and no elevator, but I counted on both the way up and the way down, and there were definitely only 411. We had a good time, though, looking around at various landings in the bell tower and getting various views of the city. I was a little nervous at the top remember what had happened to the Campanile in St. Mark's in 1902, but it was okay. Nick and I also managed to see a lot of the sights that we had seen from the ground earlier in the day.





















After finishing the Campanile, Nick and I wandered around the front of the Campanile and the Duomo, and also saw the outside of the Baptistry, made of the same white and green marble tiles found in the cathedral and including the gold doors dubbed by Michaelangelo the "Gates of Paradise."









From there, we wandered over to the Piazza della Santissima Annunziata, which included the Ospedale degli Innocenti, a historic orphanage of Florence. The part I liked best was the carved designs of swaddled babies above the arches of the building.



From there, we started making our way generally back to the train station, but also saw a few more sights, including San Gaetano, the Basilica of San Lorenzo, and the Piazza della Repubblica.









Also, near the train station, we took a second look at the outside of the Santa Maria Novella that we had passed earlier in the day.



We arrive at the train station at about 3:55 for our 4:25 train. We successfully collect the luggage and head over toward the track that we think the train might come in on to wait for it to show up on the board. Unfortunately, by 4:10, our train is listed as delayed -- and we are freezing in the open train station. We notice the "waiting rooms," but Nick claims you typically have to pay to be able to sit in those, which he claims are like airline lounges. But we go over to investigate anyways, and it turns out they are totally free -- and really warm. Perfect. Our train continues to be delayed (it doesn't arrive in Florence until about 5), but I don't particularly mind.

We get on the train, and unfortunately have seats diagonal from each other rather than directly across from each other. An American girl hears me talking, so I discuss with her for a bit; turns out she's from Concord High School in NH and is spending a semester in Italy. Nick falls asleep. I do texting with Gianpaolo, the owner of the bed and breakfast we're going to be staying at in Rome, to arrange our final arrival time.

We finally make it into the giant Termini train station in Rome about an hour and a half later. From there, we get right onto the subway and hop off about four stops later in the neighborhood of our house. We are pleased to discover that it is definitely significantly warmer (about 20 degrees Fahrenheit difference) than it had been in Venice and Florence. We find the apartment we're headed for eventually, with just a little bit of wandering (I know we're in the right vicinity, though, because of my pre-trip research on Google Street View). It's up on the 8th floor, and Nick decides the tiny Euro-elevator is broken. He helps me carry all three of our suitcases up the 8-or-so flights of stairs. Gianpaolo's friend meets us, and the room is quite nice. We also discover that the elevator wasn't broken, it's just that Nick had to close the door for it to work (duh).

Gianpaolo's friend recommends some places to eat, but they all involve both subway and buses to get to, so we just wander around the mainly residential neighborhood we seem to be in, and find a take-out pizza place. I get a pizza with potatoes on it (that I initially thought were cheese...). I've actually had really good pizza-with-potatoes at Jupiter in Berkeley, but this one was decidedly not great. That's okay, though. We also stopped at a grocery store before eating to get food (and beer for Nick), but as soon as we get back to the room Nick has a beer explosion -- somehow the bottle gets bumped by the other groceries and there's an oopsies. Oh well (he managed to get replacement beer later on in the trip).

Overall, it was a pretty good day. Here are some of the places we saw in Florence on the map:


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