Day 3, The Vatican (9/16)

Though poorly curated and a bear of a maze to get through, The Vatican Museum is arguably one of the most important museum stops in the world. It must also be one of the most crowded, and, like many other spots in Italy, not particularly known for its service or assistance. Luckily, Julie had gotten us our tickets in advance, so when we got there at 9 in the morning we were able to waltz right in past the growing line of less prepared visitors, through the metal detectors, and up the flights of stairs to immediately begin our day-long visit.

The vastness of the collection makes it a little hard to navigate, and the massive guided tours that don't care if they are in your way only add a source of frustration. The good news about tour groups is that they are limited in their scope, so we were not bothered by them much in the hall of ancient sculpture, or in the Etruscan artifacts wing. Looking at artifacts from the ancient Egyptians and Mesopotamians was more difficult, though, and traversing the rooms of Renaissance painting was like trying our hands at being sardines.

It was worth it, though. Going in, my top goal was to see the Raphael Rooms, the original apartments with walls and ceilings by Raphael. It is here that you will find The School of Athens, with its guest appearance by Michelangelo, and the room of Constantine (which was actually created by Raphael's students). Each of the rooms was breathtaking and worth the long walk and elbowing it took to get through them. Also worth the feeling of being crushed and the neck ache from staring up for so long was the Sistine Chapel.

The art, of course, is phenomenal, the talent obvious and amazing, but for me the greatest feeling was one of communion with these figures from so long ago. Different from viewing a painting in a wall, or one that travels from museum to museum, these frescoes are in the places where these people slaved over them five hundred years before. And apparently at the same time. The story that stuck with me tells of Raphael stopping in to see what Michelangelo was working on in the chapel and, being so impressed, then altering his own methods to bring a more lively touch to his work. There was a bit of hero worship going on, too, as Raphael then added Michelangelo to his School of Athens, a figure from the then present breaking in on the world of the classic past.

Beyond paintings, Calvin's favorite spot was the Hall of Animals, an odd and interesting collection of animal sculptures from different artists and eras. I was fascinated by the collection of Egyptian relics from the period of Roman rule (Egyptian gods dressed in Roman fashion), and the cuneiform tablets. For Jon, Nero's giant purple bath of porphyry was the most memorable.

A fear of missing something dogged me much of the way. We only stopped for one much needed rest after doing the ancient rooms and before heading into the painted apartments, and when we finally emerged onto the street late in the afternoon we stopped for a quick lunch/dinner before walking around the museum and into the square, because you can't go that far without seeing St. Peters. After the Sistine Chapel, St. Peters felt enormous, but lacking in its presentation. We wandered through it, we took note of Michelangelo's Pieta, the most notable part of the stop for me, and wandered back out again into a dusky square. We managed a quick stop to the Vatican Post before it closed, and we called it a day. A long day.

To sum it up in one word—amazing.

Outside the Vatican Museum

The Hall of Statues

The Hall of Animals

The giant Porphyry tub

The Etruscan wing

The Egyptian wing

Anubis as a Roman

Cuneiform

Trappist beer for lunch

Belini

The Room of Constantine

The School of Athens

Michelangelo in the School of Athens

St. Peters in the evening

Michelangelo's early Pieta

Late dinner and drinks

Italy day 2, Pompeii (9/15)

We allowed ourselves no time to dwell on time differences or sink into jet lag. Sunday morning, day 2, found us up at 6am and off to catch a train south to Naples. We were Pompeii bound.

First I should mention that taking our train loving son on the high speed train through the countryside of Italy was in itself a monumental event. Plus their rail service is all inclusive, and we were served small coffees with biscotti for our trip down, and Prosecco with cookies on our trip back. The local service from Naples to Pompeii, however, the Circumvensuviana, was a little different.

As cool the travel was, though, Pompeii was of course the highlight of the day. A very long, very warm day with lots and lots of walking.

Here are some things that surprised me about Pompeii:
1. The vastness. It was much bigger than I had expected.
2. The odd stray-like dogs wandering all over the site.
3. The eastern European guy wearing only a t-shirt and underwear.
4. The pomegranates growing on the trees.

We purchased an overlay book on our way in that showed images of the ruins as they are today with vinyl overlays depicting their original shapes and purposes. Without it, or the map we purchased from the ticket booth, we would never have recognized the fast food service or the bakery, although the beautiful bath house, the amphitheaters, and the brothel were obvious by themselves.

Jon loved the streets with their unique stepping stones and grooves cut into them by chariot usage. Calvin loved the lizards that were hiding in the sun and scuttling over the stone surfaces everywhere, a meeting of past and present, a glimpse at how the natural world will reclaim its space when we are gone. I think the bath house was my favorite. It was remarkably well preserved, and truly beautiful.

Mostly, the take away from the day was a true sense of the past that came from walking through the stone streets past the vestiges of a society thousands of years older than ours, but not really all that different. Plus it was really cool that when we first walked into the forum, our view of Vesuvius included cloud formations that gave the impression that the volcano was erupting again.

Pomegranates growing on trees

Vesuvius errupting

"Moldy old ruins" -Dad

"Look! Another lizard!" -Calvin

another lizard

Bath house

Horse butt floor mosaic in the House of the Fawn

Original piping

At the bar?

Flour mills at the bakery

Note the stepping stones in the street

Half amphitheater

Full amphitheater

Heading home

Italy day 1, the Heart of Rome

We left our home in Michigan shortly after breakfast on Friday, and arrived in Rome shortly after breakfast on Saturday. The time between is memorable only in a sort of questionable or tenuous fashion. There were two planes, three airports, a few odd meals here and there, but those places, and the exact number of hours of dark and light, is a little blurry in my memory. What is not at all fuzzy to me is my first day ever on a new continent, riding in the taxi through lands unknown, turning a corner and finding that we were surrounded by ancient ruins, and lugging our stuff into our temporary Roman home with awestruck eagerness.

In Rome, the seven of us stayed in an apartment only three blocks from the Spanish Steps in one direction, Trevi Fountain in another. We were in the heart of the high fashion district, right on the Heart of Rome walking tour, as recommended by Rick Steves, and that's what we did with our first day, although on so little sleep it might have been more like a Heart of Rome stumbling tour. From the Spanish Steps and Bernini's boat fountain we wandered through narrow streets made of pavers and lined with tall, colorful buildings. We found lunch in a small alley restaurant, and were surprised to turn a corner into a small square (piazza) and find the Pantheon in the middle of the modern day hustle.

It was a Saturday, and every piazza, every street, every restaurant was crowded with sight seers. We ducked in a church here and there, we stopped again for snacks and beer, we wandered by Marcus Aurelius' column and looked at the reliefs, we struggled through the crush of people at Trevi Fountain, we saw parliament and the post office, and we got briefly lost before going back to our Roman home to refresh before dinner.

And we made it. I think a couple of us took short naps, some of us just washed our faces, drank water, changed clothes, and dragged ourselves back out again, but regardless of the method, we made it out for dinner and back again before finally collapsing for the night. I found it surprisingly easy—it was the awe of being in a completely new world that kept me going. That amazing feeling, however, didn't keep me from finally dropping into a restful oblivion shortly after dinner.

And that was day 1.