Europe - Days Four and Five

Europe Day 4

Today we visited the Vatican and my favorite – the Sistine chapel. I know you’ve all seen pictures and so on, so I won’t bore you with details that you already know, but I wanted to share a few things that were new to me. If these things aren’t new to you, you can just skip ahead :)

First off, the Vatican is a state all to itself. It is completely self-sufficient. It houses approximately 1,000 people – all dedicated to the pope’s needs and the needs of the Vatican. It has its own shopping and medical facilities. It is completely independent of Italy, even though it sits in the middle of Italy. It has its own beautiful gardens. It is huge. I had no idea of its size. It is surrounded by a wall that is approximately 50 feet high and is over 1000 years old. The Vatican used to wage war against its enemies and one of the popes, Pope Julius II, actually would go out and fight in the battles.

We were not actually allowed in the Vatican itself, but we were taken into the Vatican museum, which has only been open to the public since 1929. It is amazingly beautiful. You go through a series of hallways which have different “decorating” themes, each more beautiful than the last.

Jesus' resurrection tapestries

The second hallway's walls are lined with these huge and magnificent tapestries. These tapestries took over 30 years to complete. They are enormous (guessing 30 X 20 feet) and are extraordinarily beautiful.

Notice Jesus' eyes. They follow you as you walk down the magnificent corridor.

The next hallway's ceilings:

These actually look like they are three dimensional sculptures , but they really are paintings that look like they are three dimensional.


Finally you’re allowed into the chapel for 20 minutes. That’s just not enough time. It is so amazingly beautiful. I’m so thankful we have been able to see it after the restoration. To think that they used to say that Michelangelo was not very good with colors. Oh my. Some of his colors look like they are illuminated. Amazing. Words cannot express it. To think that Michelangelo did this standing up (not lying down as some have thought) holding his arm up. He even designed his own scaffolding for the project and when they did the restoration some 500 years later, they used his exact same design for the scaffolding.

On the funny side: They allow talking in the chapel but only in “hushed” tones, and there is a man that stands at the front and as the volume begins to increase, “shushes” everyone. I thought, “How funny. If you would ask this man what he does for a living, he’d have to say, ‘I’m a shusher. I shush people.’”

Next we visited St. Peter’s. What an amazing piece of architecture. I don’t think God is very impressed, but from man’s little eyes, it is quite spectacular. I cannot imagine the $$$ that it would have taken to build it. The pictures just cannot capture it.

Of course, La Pieta is located here. Another example of Michelangelo’s brilliance.

I caught this picture of Dale in the foreground and if you look way way up at the top you’ll see "O PASTOR. "


They have former popes on “display.” Quite interesting. I don’t know how they keep them so well preserved. Maybe they are frozen. There didn’t seem to be any information available to read and no one to ask. You’re kind of on your own here. We think this one looks like Pope John 23rd, maybe.

We ate our last dinner meal in Rome just outside the Vatican. Our favorite meal so far – a spinach-stuffed-cannelloni-type thing and another pasta thing with cheeses and mushrooms and y-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-u-mmy!

After the tour of the Vatican and the Sistine chapel, we had the option of a ride home with the tour group, or going on to St. Peter’s on our own and also getting back on our own. Of course, there really was no choice. La Pieta was there! The tour leader assured us that getting home would be “very simple.” Yeah, I know about those “very simple” things – but we risked it.

Well, you’re right – it wasn’t so very simple. We had to ask directions about 10 different times and everyone said some form of – “Oh sure, just go left at that corner up there and then about 200 meters you’ll see the metro – blah, blah, blah.” Well, we turned left at that corner and immediately the road splits into a Y. We finally figured out which way to go from there (after asking) and then about 600 meters later, found the metro (subway), found which tunnel to take, but buying the ticket – oh, my. You have to buy it from a machine and it is all written in Italian. The only English I could find on the machine was a warning: “This machine will not give more change than 4 euros.” Okay. I get that. Don’t put more money in than you need. Next thing – how to get the ticket. You should have seen Dale and I trying to figure out this machine in Italian. What a riot. I’m sure any local watching would have gotten a chuckle out of it, but no one was watching anyway.

We finally figured out the machine and so the next thing is figuring out which train and where to get on and where to get off. Well, we did it all and arrived safely home (to the hotel.) It was quite a great feeling of accomplishment and at the same time it’s given me a lot more sympathy for foreigners.

We walked our legs off, but it was a great day!

Day Five – Leaving Rome

Dale decides to let me sleep and goes for some last-minute “try to see everything that he didn’t see before” excursion. We needed to be at our bus (about a two-block walk from our hotel) that takes us back to the airport at 2:00 so I thought Dale would be flying in at 1:55 in his usual form. I encouraged him to be back in plenty of time so that we would not be doing that rush-around-like-a-chicken-with-your-head-cut-off thing. My understanding was that he would be back around 1:30. His understanding was that he needed to be back before the 12:00 check-out time.

In the meantime, I decided to do some last-minute shopping and so I packed us up, got the suitcases down to the lounge, asked them if they could store our luggage for a while while I shopped, and left. (By the way, I felt I was being very brave to venture out on my own, but I wouldn’t be going far, I assured myself.)

Dale returns at around 11:30 and finds me gone along with the suitcases and everything else. He goes to the desk to inquire. They have no idea. “Did she check out?” “No.” Huh? He tries not to worry (of course, praying instead) but after a half hour goes by, he is giving in to the worry thing. He starts thinking – “maybe foul play.” You know how our minds work. He is so confused because I hadn’t mentioned my leaving and it is not a characteristic thing for me to do. Again he inquires at the desk and now mentions that he is concerned. They start asking the other workers there and one of them does remember my checking our bags in. This helps Dale a lot. He turns around and goes outside and there I am, walking up to the door with a sweet smile on my face. He’s a little cranky, but happy to see me. Later he quips that he was beginning to wonder how he was going to replace me. “It could take a couple of weeks,” he says. Hah!

Well, I mention all this to say that it is amazing how miscommunication can really mess things up. We both had one understanding and clearly thought we knew what the other was going to do. NOT :)

Our trip back to London is uneventful (thank you, Lord).

The only picture I have for today is riding the train back to London (after flying from Rome).