The Vatican

I hardly know where to begin with our Vatican tour. We started out our morning by visiting the Pantheon. Although you technically know that everything here is old, it's another thing to actually experience it. The Pantheon is a wonderful place with the most incredible roof that actually has a hole in the top. Rain can come in and the floor is built with a concave center for drainage purposes. It wasn't originally built for Christian worship but became that way. Of course I'd forgotten to take the SD card with me so I have no pictures for the Pantheon. We stopped on the way to the Vatican to get me one. :>)

From there we headed to meet our private tour guide, Laura, for about 4 hours. The walk took us about 25 minutes from where we were to where we were to meet Laura. The line for the Vatican was probably about 2 hours long for people who didn't already have tickets, and let me tell you - it was HOT outside with very little breeze. I don't think I could've stood there for that long myself. Our guide was at the designated location and we walked right in. I was immediately overwhelmed by the sheer number of people there. Thousands upon thousands visit every day and apparently Monday's are always crowded due to the fact that the Vatican is closed on Sunday's. Here's a photo of one of the most amazing sculptures in my opinion:


Laura was extremely knowledgeable and I won't even being to go into everything we saw and learned. The Sistine Chapel was a favorite of both John and myself - the detail of Michaelangelo is extraordinary and the history behind it even moreso. He did one wall and part of the ceiling when he was 33 years old, and the last wall in his 60's. The story of the second coming is depicted on that wall and would take one years to see and understand everything he did. We weren't allowed to take pictures but John got some great video that wasn't technically allowed either!

St. Peter's Bassilica was wonderful, as well. Apparently St. Peter is actually buried there and they have a shrine above his bones in his honor. It was very moving to be there and everywhere in that city.

We did find out that the Pope was doing a speech the following day so the area was being prepared for that which was pretty cool.

Attaching some pictures and I'm sure John will have more detail that I've forgotten. :>)

OK - John here. I'm not technically an editor to this blog yet, so I'm logged-in as Christie.

Rome was really something else. One thing that I left with was a happiness that at least some of antiquity has been preserved - in the Pantheon and in the Vatican. So much of Rome's grandeur has been lost to time - the dark ages, the people who did not realize what they had in their midst. One thought that occurs is this - what would we be like today had the ingenuity of Rome continued and had not fallen by the wayside after the empire's fall? Seriously - one of our guides in ancient Rome talked about the water system (water flows freely in fountains in Rome), and how his ancestors charted out and channeled only the best sources of water into the city - and those sources are still used today. Pretty crazy - eh? People are still discovering how much the Romans knew of engineering and building.

Anyway - we visited Ancient Rome - the Forum and the Colosseum - first. After that we left with a sense of what we 'might' have seen had they not been pillaged and left to ruin over the years. And the next day we saw the complete opposite - history preserved in the Vatican and the Pantheon (in fact the Vatican is an example of historic "recycling" - a lot of materials from ancient Roman buildings ended up there). Pretty amazing.