Lost with Maps -- Rome Day 2

4 Dec:

The previous night, we had been talking with a girl named Krista.  She was from North Carolina and spoke with a very refreshing southern accent.  To top it off, she was studying in Manchester, England, which set her on a similar level to us who study in London.  Naturally, we got along quite well.  So she joined us for the day.

Delicious chocolate croissant for breakfast.

First thing we did was head to the Vatican.  We passed most tours by the subway stop because we figured they were scams.  The closer we got to the Vatican, we somehow found a guy who looked legit.  He said he would give us a deal, so we took it.  He led us to a group of people already gathered.  Everyone had headphones because the tour guide had a microphone and it's easier than shouting over all the other guides for the Vatican.  The giant group was led to their office to pay (we didn't pay right away either).  It took a while for us to actually get to the Vatican Museum, but we got there.  Lots and lots of pictures and statues.  So many statues.  I'd still be there if I stopped to take pictures of all the statues and all the intricacies of the ceiling. 

St. Peter's Basilica with a Christmas Tree out front

DID YOU KNOW? (with pictures)
-- The ceiling of most of the Vatican Museum is just painted?  Although it looks 3-D, it really is just an illusion by the artist.  The ceiling doesn't get 3-D patterns until the final corridors leading to the Sistine Chapel.

See?  Painted ceiling.

This ceiling is not painted.  Well, it is painted, but the contours aren't.

-- A lot of the statues in the Vatican are of nude people.  This is because most of the statues are imported from Greece where quality statues were built.  Quality statues weren't in Rome, apparently.  One of the Popes whose name I forgot disliked this so much that he started walking around the Vatican at night and snapping off the statue's penises.  So a sculptor was hired to decorate the remaining in-tact statues with leaves over their parts.  This practice ended at the end of this Pope's reign.  So if you wander the Vatican, you'll notice that some statues have actual penises, some have them broken off, and the others have leaves over that area. 
-- The Vatican attempted to fix one of the statues that arrived from Greece that was broken.  However, when they saw what the original looked like and compared it to what they did, they decided not to fix anymore statues.  The original had the statue's arm raised, but their attempt to fix it had the arm bent at the elbow.  Whoops.

Statue with the fixed arm

pictures of the original statue

-- The late Pope John Paul II had a sculpture commissioned for one of the courtyards of the Vatican Museum.  This sculpture is a giant bronze sphere that represents the Earth.  Another smaller sphere is eating its way out of the Earth with destructive artistry.  The message of this sculpture is that we must take care of the Earth or its inner spirit will one day destroy us all.  The happier message comes from the fact that a single person can push the sculpture to rotate it: a single person can change the rotation of the Earth and can help make things better.  So we should all work to be that person.  (And hey, if everyone does it, then maybe the Earth won't eat itself.)

Appears to be an ordinary sculpture

but it spins!!

The Heart of the Earth is eating us all!!!

The Sistine Chapel wasn't what I expected.  I expected a giant dome with amazingly intricate paintings.  No. It was more like a rectangular chamber with a really high ceiling, but still covered with intricate paintings.  The ceiling and the wall featuring the alter is of course painted by Michelangelo, but the tops of the ceilings were painted by really awesome students at an art school.  The entire chapel is a fresco.  A fresco is a painting painted on wet cement, so when the cement dries, the paint dries with it, and there's no deterioration of color over time.  It's very hard to paint a fresco.  And there's no redoing it once it's done because you can't fix a mistake.

I should also point out that pictures aren't allowed in the Sistine Chapel because it was somehow copyrighted by someone.  So now this person is paid every time a postcard is made of the Sistine Chapel.  GAH!!  IT WAS SO BEAUTIFUL!

SOME MORE FACTS:
-- Michelangelo made sculptures, not paintings.  So when he was asked to PAINT, the Sistine Chapel, he didn't want to at first.  He was somehow convinced anyway.  Instead of starting with the simplest picture, he decided to start with the most complicated featuring Noah's Ark and the people and animals on board.  This is considered his one mistake because the details of the painting aren't clear for the people on the floor.  The rest of the ceiling is big enough for everyone to see.
-- Michelangelo was also a huge atheist.  So when he painted Adam and God touching fingers, he gave Adam a belly button to spark where the belly button came from and whether Adam really had a mother.  If he was made from the mud of the Earth, why would he have a belly button? 
-- The frescos along the walls of the Sistine Chapel were painted by students who were instructed not to sign the frescos with their names.  To combat this, they decided to paint themselves in as many frescos as they could.  So if you walk into the Sistine Chapel, look for the people looking out at the viewer because those are portraits of the artists.  Everyone of religious standing does not look out of the painting.
-- Michelangelo also painted himself into the Sistine Chapel.  One of the apostles below Jesus is holding the skin that was torn from his physical body as he ascends into Heaven.  Michelangelo's face is painted into that skin.
-- The giant fresco over the alter is separated into three parts:  Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell.  You can see a mixture of Michelangelo's own beliefs and religious doctrine within that painting.  (There's so much I can't remember everything exactly)

From left:  Krista, Abby, Becky, me

After the Vatican, we wandered in search of something to eat.  Bought tee shirts outside the Castle of Saint Angelo along the river.  We ended up eating at a small greasy-spoon fast-food place.  I had a calzone and forgot to take a picture of it.  Could have used some pizza sauce.  Anyway, our ultimate goal was to walk to the Colosseum and see that during the day before seeing it at night.  But we got distracted by a lot of other things like a carnival on the Piazza Navona:

Dude had dancing hands.  So funny!

Becky (left) and Abby (right) split a giant donut thing with Nutella spreading.  I tried a bite, it was delicious.

And the Pantheon (where I got to see the grave of Raphael):

The Pantheon was undergoing some updates when we visited.

Grave of Raphael the painter

Getting lost was also somewhere in there.  We finally got close enough to the Roman Forum that the streets were flooded with tourists.  The biggest sight was a giant building called the Monument of Vittorio and Emanuele II.  The first two words that came to mind when I saw it was "Giant" and "Roman".  So I now refer to it as the Giant Roman Structure. 

It's giant and Roman, no?

We got to the Roman Forum around sunset, and then we got to the Colosseum at twilight.  By then, the four of us were really tired.  We took thirty minutes to figure out our next move at the base of the Colosseum.  The goal was to visit the Acqua Paola Fountain on the other side of the river and then get dinner at this place the woman at the hostel mentioned but didn't name (she did mark it on a map, though). 

Me and the ruins of the old Roman Forum

The Colossum from a distance at twilight

And so we went.  We saw the Circus Maximus at night.  At first, we wondered what it was used for, but then I suggest chariot races.  And that was the answer (confirmed two days later on the tour of the Colosseum.  More on that later.)  So we continued to the fountain on the top of the hill.  It took a long time.  We complained about our feet hurting and saw lots of small streets with hanging Christmas lights between the buildings.  But we got to the fountain nonetheless.  Took a few pictures, and because it was on the top of a hill, we also took pictures of the nighttime city scape.  Then we started to wander in search of food.

Me and the Roman city scape at night

The restaurant we finally decided on was a small joint with a dessert bar.  The owner of the place was really friendly.  He came by at first and asked us all where we were from.  He didn't know of Wisconsin or North Carolina, but he knew Virgina (where Abby is from) because he's been there three times.  He was so much fun!  Our waiter was just as old and helped us muddle through the menu (which was all Italian and not at all English).  It was entertaining because he also used the sheet Abby brought that could translate a lot of the common things on menus.  Our Italian sucked, his English wasn't good at all but still better than our Italian; but we got our orders in nonetheless.  One of the best experiences in a restaurant abroad is in that little place mostly because of the owner and our waiter.  The owner came by later while we were eating to tell us about all the musicals he's been to.  That was fun to listen to.  Seriously awesome restaurant.  Good wine too.  I had a ravioli dish stuffed with cheese and spinach. 

My ravioli with Abby's spaghetti

Back in the hostel, we hung out in the kitchen for a bit.  Krista poured herself a few more glasses of wine from the bottles sitting on the table.  I accidentally kicked someone off the computer but didn't blog about the day.  By that time, it was really late -- about midnight -- and we had to get up early for Florence the next day.  We talked about which train we should take and whether we should go or not.  We eventually got it figured out, so we decided on a course of action for tomorrow morning.  Krista wasn't joining us for Florence because her flight was early Monday and there was still more stuff on her list of things to see in Rome. 

(Wait a couple more hours and you'll hear all about Florence.  It takes a while to get the pictures uploaded and such.)