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!