The Vatican

We arranged for a Vatican tour the following day. They supposedly have like 9 miles of art galleries or is it 90 different galleries or some absurd amount? Perhaps an intervention is in order? Our tour was to be the basics, take the bus over to Vatican City, get the orientation, see the Sistine Chapel and other heavy duty art.

Since the tour was in the afternoon we were able to walk around the local neighborhood. This included the Pantheon and environs. Highly recommended, the Pantheon is totally impressive and it's free. Guides will tell you that the hole in the roof doesn't allow any rain to come in due to mysterious and scientific reasons. I was amused to see the obvious drainage system in the floor but that might be just for non believers. Note the handy directional sign above provided by McDonalds. Like many things in Rome the Pantheon was built for Roman gods and later repurposed to Christianity. This saved the expense of a whole new building as well as made a definite statement about who's in charge now.

We took the hop-on bus from there to the train station to check out rental cars. Since the tour company office is right near we decided to go over there to catch the bus rather than going back to our hotel. After some amusing English/Italian misunderstandings this was all worked out. We had lunch and then got onto the tour bus. Vatican City was just a quick trip across the river and we off boarded at the museum entrance. Inside we were issued radios with earbuds so we could listen to the guide. I must admit I didn't listen much, so much guide speak just sounds the same. Also the guide was giving descriptions in English and French, so why is French 10 times as long to describe the same thing? It was like: "Here we enter the Vatican Museum" and then in French: "Ici on entreviez the gloriosez and magnificat muse de la grand pres important religion du monde. Attende le..." you get the idea.

The Sistine chapel is probably magnificent but suffers from presentation problems. First of all the art is on the ceiling, so far away you can't really see it. And the crowd filling the floor mostly consists of tourists who have lost their groups or others who are trying to sneak a photo or others who can't figure out where the exit is. The echo factor is tremendous so when someone steps on a kid's toe, the howl reverberates for minutes.

Not to worry about the problems with seeing the art, the exit, when you find it, takes you right into a gift shop with plenty of expensive coffee table books that you can study when you return home. In fact this is only one of the six total gift shops we passed through on our basic museum tour. By my estimations the Vatican as a whole must have approximately 54 (or 540?) gift shops in total. These days everyone needs to earn a buck but this seemed pretty tacky. Maybe the Vatican can sell some art back to the original owners if they need some money.

After the tour we were invited to visit an "approved" gift shop. I declined although my wife was intrigued by the statues and jewelry, all blessed by the pope. Well, not the actual pope but someone he assigned to the job so that's almost as good, isn't it? I have been told by a friend that on Sunday when the pope blesses the crowd in St. Peters square, enterprising vendors have piled up boxes full of trinkets so they can receive the real thing direct.

Since Vatican City is a company town, it's interesting to see the various uniforms worn by the employees. A handy pocket guide would be fun to be able to look up the outfits to see what they mean. It could be sort of like bird watching, with rewards for quantity and rarity of spottings. There would be no prize for noticing the silliest of them all, the Swiss Guards. I am assured they really are Swiss and I believe they can only serve in Rome for a limited period due to the stress of the ridiculous outfits. Supposedly designed by Michelangelo this proves again his perverse sense of humor as described by our guide while I wasn't listening.

Enough of that. We lined up a Fiat Punto for tomorrow, the agent assures me it's "a fine car, a Fiat". I don't really believe that "fine car" and "Fiat" belong in the same sentence but that might just be my prejudice, we shall find out tomorrow.