<Brian's brief time-tabled list of "highlights" (and of whinging)>
- Woke up earlyish to catch the bus to St Peters Square.
- St Peters square was huge and very overwhelming. We had a prebooked tour of the Vatican for 10:30am and the directions were to follow the left columns to the starting point. Got to the manned security point where we were told to wait till 10:15.
- We walked around taking pictures, videos of the square, went to the official Vatican toilets...
- Turned up at the security point at 10:15ish, showed the new security guard manned there the receipt and was told we were at the wrong entrance! Turns out we were at the starting point of the St Peters Scavi tour, not the Vatican tour... GAH!!!
- End up running from one side of St Peters Square to the other, asking a Polizia for directions to the Vatican entrance, running further up the road, asking a Swiss Guard, then running another corner, see a heaps long lineup for the entrance which we could luckily surpass due to the prebooked tour. All up, maybe around 2km within 10 mins... pretty good for a morning run and just made it in time for the tour!
- Walked around the Vatican... this place is awesome and the art is amazing... the art on the Sistine Chapel is incredible... that Michelangelo guy sure knows his stuff. OK, running out of buzzwords now, but is definitely the best church in all of Europe... as we found out later on as all the other churches kinda suck in comparison. The official Vatican tour was fantastic as well with a lot of information that I wouldn't have been bothered researching otherwise. The pointers about what to look for in the Sistine Chapel regarding the "Creation of Life" and the " Last Judgement" were spot on.
- Did the St Peters Scavi tour at 3:15... this time at least we knew where the entrance was. This tour was interesting as it shows you the history of the St Peters Basilica and the excavations they have done under the basilica when they accidentally discovered a necropolis underneath.
- Climbed to the top of St Peters... a whopping 551 steps to get a nice view from the top.
- Walked around inside the St Peters basilica itself... pretty nice art... life-size replicas of the popes lying there dead was kinda freaky.
- Had dinner at the "Puparrazi", then went back to accom and slept.
<Lang's Extended Version>
I had arranged the official Vatican and Sistine Chapel tour before leaving home by faxing a request directly to them before the trip started.. Apparently these are very difficult to get, but are definitely worth the effort as the tour booking is only 29.50E each and you get to skip the ginormous line..
On the morning of the tour, we caught bus 40 to St. Peters, the sheer size of the place was incredible.. we spent some time wondering around and taking some photos and videos, thinking that we had plenty of time to spare.. Silly enough, with all the research I thought I did, I didn't realize that the Vatican entrance is on the other side of the square, 2 blocks away. So with only 15 minutes before the tour started, we had to run for it.. Felt like a scene from 'Run, Fat Boy, Run', which we saw just before the trip commenced. We made it just in time, dripping with sweat from the 'marathon' we had just ran..
The Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel was absolutely amazing.. Equipped with an audio head set each, the tour guide explained to us the history and story behind most of the major works, which were very interesting - well, when we were listening, that is!! There were quite a few distractions, from penis-less and naked statues, intricate mosaics, huge and very detailed paintings etc etc.. we didn't know where to look at times.. up, down, left and right.. it was a feast for the eyes!
Before we got to the Sistine Chapel, the guide explained to us how the Sistine Chapel came to be.. Michelangelo spent 4 years producing his 'Creation of Life' masterpiece of his, standing up and doing each section a bit at a time.. During this time, he had spent many nights dissecting the corpses of people, studying their life form and reproducing it in his art..
The 'Last Judgment' painted behind the alter of the Chapel showed a picture of Christ, one hand raised to represent heaven, and the other down to represent hell.. It was simply astonishing!
After the tour ended, we headed back to the entrance to collect our bag, stopping to buy a poster and postcard of the two masterpieces described above. We were starving by that time anyway, so purchased a couple of pizzas and sat outside the Vatican to munch away on them.. Oh, Brian also spotted a gelato store, so we had our first taste of gelato.. yummo!!!
Another thing that I prebooked on the same day was the Scavi tour, which took you down to the excavations of St. Peters. This was supposed to be even more difficult to get tickets for as they only allow 200 visitors there per day.
Christian, our guide from Transylvania explained to us how they accidentally found a burial chamber when they were ready to bury a recently deceased pope under the basilica. After some more digging around, they discovered there was a necropolis (city of graves/mausoleums) under St Peters. This led to the search for St Peters tomb which was miraculously below the alter of the basilica.
As if the marathon we did earlier in the day wasn't enough exercise for us, we also decided to climb to the top of the cupola, Michelangelo's last work before he died.. It was a whopping 551 steps, or if you wanted to pay an extra 2 Euro then only 320 steps.. guess which one we opted for?? Well, we were kinda stingy, and what's the extra 231 or so steps anyway? =P So up and up and up we went.. The view and the breeze at the top was great..
Afterwards, we went inside St Peter's Basilica itself to have a look around.. Saw another one of Michelangelo's work - the Pieta, a statue of Mary mourning of the loss of her son, Jesus, lying in her lap.. Oh, we also felt the foot of the statue of St. Peters and Dog Dog had his pic taken to the amusement of a couple standing nearby..
Our day was topped off by a nice meal of antipasto, lasagna and gnocchi at a restaurant called "Puparazzi" recommended in the Rick Steve's book that we've been hauling around... We definitely deserved it after such a long day!
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