Rome Vatican

November 17, 2009

Yes, there is a reason there are only Jo's pictures here. Nancy lost the camera in a cab. Sigh. Nancy owes Jonathan a new one. Bummer though is there were some really great pictures on there.

Today we went to Vatican City for a tour. We started at the Vatican Museum and worked our way through the Egyptian parts on to the ancient Roman and Greek-influenced parts. There was this very very old and broken statue called the Bordello Torso that we found out later was the inspiration behind the nudes of Michelangelo. The Rafael Rooms were really cool although we found out that Raphael did a lot of designing and let assistants do the painting.

Of course, the highlight was the Sistine Chapel. They don't allow photography of any kind in there. It was stunning and pretty cool to be standing there looking up at art that you'd only ever seen in a book or on TV. The Rick Steve's mp3 audio tour was very interesting and explained all about the themes and stories told by the frescos as well as how it was done. Also pretty interesting was the notes made of the later paintings and how his style changed.

From there you end up in St. Peter's Basilica which is massive, as in huge, huge, huge. Most of the pictures below are from St. Peter's and the square in front. Jo has the guidebook upstairs to we will add some details later once we remind ourselves how to spell some of the names of things. At nearly 1 pm after hours of touring the Vatican, we found a bank to use the ATM then caught a cab at the Taxi stand in front of St. Peter's Square and were on our way to the Hard Rock Cafe Rome. The cabby didn't have change for the $50 euro note we got at the bank so we had to scrape up smaller bills and in the confusion, the camera must have dropped out of my pocket. I knew it within steps of getting out of the cab but he was long gone. Attempts to call the taxi companies by the gracious hostess in the Hard Rock didn't turn up anything. The camera wasn't that valuable, but I'm bummed we don't have the pictures and that now I don't have a camera for the rest of the trip. Jo will have to step up to the plate and take more photos.