The Smallest City-State in the World

December 5th--The day started off slow, as I went to a few places to find batteries and pick up more toothpaste, then make train reservations. You know, that really thrilling stuff that makes travel worthwhile.

Mike and I were splitting up for a bit--he decided to see Rome in one day, then go to Venice for one night before going to Nice and meeting up with me before we continue to Barcelona.

I spent most of the day at the Vatican. I started at with the museums and the Sistine Chapel, then had lunch at a cafe before heading into, and on top of, St. Peter's Basilica. The crowds weren't bad at all, and I saw a huge amount of stuff, to the point where I was a little desensitized by the end. There were too many beautiful statues and paintings...

The approach to St. Peter's Square

St. Peter's from the Museum grounds.

To get to the Vatican Museums' most famous work of art, the Sistine Chapel, you have to go through all of the other museums, and I took about an hour getting through them--it was a relaxing time, because they were all sparsely populated except for some tour groups that I tried to avoid.

For the umpteenth time on this trip, I was glad I didn't take a tour--I'm sure there are many great tour guides, and I certainly had a good experience in Berlin, but so many times they sound horrifically annoying. Either completely rehearsed or off-topic and obnoxious; for example, one of the American tour guides took an explanation of Emperor Nero's communal bathtub as an opportunity to tell the story of how him and his friend ended up in a tub with, like, 5 Swedish girls--"don't knock it until you try it, man". Kill me.

As soon as I got to the Sistine Chapel, I found out where all the people went:

They were just hanging out there, taking pictures. I refrained from taking any pictures, because the light wasn't great and I didn't want to join the horde in that way. Also, there are so many reproductions of the paintings that it hardly seemed worth it.

What was worth it was sitting there for 15 minutes and absorbing the incredible detail and mastery of Michelangelo's pieces. Everything has of course been said about them before, but sitting in their presence is something else entirely.

After finding a cheap lunch outside the Vatican, I went through the metal detectors and into St. Peter's Basilica, the focal point of the Catholic church and the biggest cathedral in the world. I didn't know that fact before I went in and was completely unprepared for its size. I don't think I've ever been in such an enormous interior space in my life. And the sculptures, and the...the...everything.

I'm glad I came to Rome near the end of my trip, because I have to think that my appreciation of the other cathedrals would have been altered by the monolithic magnificence of St. Peter's.

The next stop was the top of the dome of the Basilica, up 551 stairs. I wanted to watch the sunset from there, but I was a little early, so I spent about 45 minutes hanging out on top of Rome. Not too bad.

When I finally headed down, I went to an English language bookstore and picked up two more books to hopefully finish off the trip--Jonathan Safran Foer's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and Dave Eggers' What is the What. Both come highly recommended, but I'm afraid of how the Eggers book, about the Sudan, is going to make me feel.

I took the now crowded metro back to meet up with Mike, who had an even busier day than me squeezing in all the sights, and we had dinner and gelatto again before walking around a bit more. He went to bed to get up and go to Venice while I did the same to get ready to see the rest of Rome.