Vatican Expects Fit Christians

Monday:

Phew. Big day in Rome.

We began at the Vatican. Immediately upon exiting the bus, we were inundated by salesman for an English spoken tour. The guy insisted that we would have to wait three hours if we decided to go it alone. We rolled our eyes, having learned from our taxi driver, and proceeded to get through the door in less than 10 minutes.

Lucky for us, Jeff and I were careful about what clothes we wore. Although it was sure to be another Roman scorcher, Jeff and I both donned pants and I made sure that my blouse was not sleeveless. As we approached the Vatican Attire Assessors, numerous people in tank tops, shorts, and mini skirts sat morosely on the sidelines, and some could be heard swearing or pleading toward the front of the line. Jeff admitted that the last time he had attempted to enter the Vatican, he had been turned away.

St. Peter’s Basilica was an impressive homage to Christianity. Personally, I felt that the Catholics were being pretty open-minded to let heathens like Jeff and I (and the 20,000 other people that must have been there) traipse around the marble floors.

Next was the halls of the dead popes. Hard to believe that they’ve got all those dead popes in those big fancy boxes down there, but I guess it’s true. The oldest guy they’ve got is St. Peter, hence St. Peter’s Basilica. I dared Jeff to ask someone where they kept the body of Jesus, but he declined.

Much to our dismay, the Sistine Chapel was NOT attached to the Vatican. Instead, we had to leave the Vatican and walk about a kilometre in a huge line of people to the Vatican museums. Once inside there were endless hallways and rooms of art, each with a sign and arrow indicating that the Sistine Chapel was further on. While impressive, immediately the heat and gold within the museum became oppressive, and we hurried along expecting Michaelangelo to be revealed around each corner. I’m trying hard not to exaggerate when I say we walked a mile of hall and staircase before finally being thrust into the great chapel. Inside, the first thing we noticed was that the giant room was filled with as many people as could be squished inside. 1000? Our heads were throbbing from so much historical art that we quickly glanced to see Michaelangelo’s version of Genesis (and the one of the fingers reaching out to each other) and fought our way out toward freedom.

Ah. Gelato makes up for everything.