Europe Day 18: Vatican and Wishing

The Vatican is its own country.  It has its own post office, police force, gas station, currency, and flag.  You cannot be born a citizen of Vatican City, you must apply for citizenship later in life. 

Today, I went there.  Check that off my bucket list.

We stayed primarily in the museum.  I'm sure that it is a fantastic museum well worth the time.  Unfortunately, there are so many people there!  I could not take my time and admire the artwork, contemplating what the artist may have been trying to portray and what makes that particular peice important.  Instead, I was pushed from gallery to gallery along an river of people that never stopped moving.  I had to snap my photos quickly and leave the contemplating for later.  It was sort of dissapointing actually.  As usual we used the whisper system.  This consists of our group wearing one way radios with ear buds, and listening to the tour guide who speaks in some sort of microphone.  Generally speaking, it is an excellent system.  Our group is allowed to meander at their own pace, and we can all hear everything that is said.  Today, unless you were within a ten foot radius, the voice of our tour guide cut in and out and came through very fuzzy.  I'm sure she was a wonderful tour guide, I simply did not catch the information.

Despite this, I still found the visit enjoyable.  Despite the rush and fuss, we had an entire half our to admire the Sistine Chapel.  After going to Chartres and other Cathedrals here in Europe, I expected something much larger.  Then again, had it been larger I would have felt completely overwhelemed! The ceiling and walls are absolutely covered with people of all sizes.  The walls depict stories from the life of Moses on the left, and Jesus on the right.  In front of the room is the final judgement, with people in purgatory, waiting to ascend or fall into hell. The ceiling features nine sections of art, including the famous picture of God reaching towards Adam's hand.  I would like to point out that God is stretching his fingers, while Adam's hand is languidly reaching, fingers limp. It gives the impression that God is desperately trying to be with us, while we give a half hearted attempt to connect with him.

The Pieta is in the church in Vatican City.  Unfortunately, it was not accessible because they were preparing for the Good Friday service.  But, in the very near future we are going to return to see it.  And I'm going to mail postcards from the Vatican post office. 

Upon leaving the Vatican we found it was lunch time.  Yesterday, we stumbled upon a Mexican Art shop, so we stopped in and Kayla used her spanish speaking skills to find out if there were any mexican restaurants in the area. As luck would have it, she pointed out two-both in the neighborhood of the Vatican.  Kayla, Josh, Alli, Ethan and I searched around and found both, only to find that they were closed today. The sandwiches we had instead were not the best trade off, but there are worse things in the world than sandwiches.

Alli and Ethan walked back to the hotel in a hurry, but Kayla, Josh and I wandered a little more slowly.  We found a used book booth that stretched half a block.  There was also a castle, and something else that looked fancy, and white with lots of statues, but we still don't know quite what it was.  I took pictures anyway; it must be important to some one, right? 

We continued our wandering until we returned to the hotel.  Tired from the heat and long walk, Kayla and I watched a few episodes of Lost, before I left to find more cashews.  Sadly, the market had already closed, but that meant I made it back to the hotel in time for dinner. 

Kayla, Josh, Jade, Melissa, and our TA Casey-who arrived around breakfast-decided to visit the Trevie fountain and get dinner.  The fountain is fantastically sculpted, and the water so clear.  It seemed magical, and I was in no way ashamed to toss my coin into the water and make a wish.  I hope the great granter of wishes will still give me what I requested, despite that I only used a one cent coin.

I am fairly certain we committed a cultural error at dinner.  We went to a bar for a sit down dinner.  A bar in Europe is not a saloon, but an eating place with a bar to sit at.  I really do not know what we did wrong, but the waiter seemed very confused and said a lot of things in Italian very quickly that none of us understood.  Oh well.  My spaghetti was still delicious!

With gelato to finish it off, it was another grand day.  I am so grateful to be on this trip!