Quando a Roma...Parte 6 (sei)

After my wonderful Baroque tour, I retraced my steps back to Santa Maria degli Angeli to rest for a bit - the next tour I had booked started at 3:00 and met about 3 blocks from Roma Termini. When I got to the meeting site, there were several charter buses lined up, so I stopped inside the tour agency to ask which one was mine, and one of the men walked outside with me. There were a whole bunch of "GreenLine" tour buses (with green lines on them, of course!) and a white one at the front of the line. The man pointed to this white one and said something in Italian that I took to mean "the one in the front", but I decided to make sure by saying, "Il bianco?" and he replied, "Si." He also smiled and I think was impressed that I spoke a bit of Italian - especially since it looked like the type of agency that gets a lot of people who don't attempt to speak any Italian at all - so that made me feel rather good about myself as I walked up to il autobus bianco.

This tour was quite different from my morning adventure. I remember walking around with Simona and seeing all of these massive tour groups of ~50 people pass. The guide would walk in front with a colored scarf attached to a stick and a microphone, and the tourists would follow behind with their personal head sets. Think of a flock of sheep blindly following a shepherd and you've got the right idea. Simona had said, "See, this is why you want to take the small tours!" - and she was right.

First off, let me just say that you really do feel like a sheep wandering around when you're in a big tour group. There were some small tours of the Vatican available (similar to my Baroque tour), but I had decided to book this one for convenience, since it was easy to get to the meeting place from the train station (the small tours met at the Vatican, and as it was my first day in Rome, I wanted to keep things simple).

Our tour guide was nice enough - I have no idea what her name was - and she had a pink scarf tied to the end of her "shepherd's crook". We bused over to Vatican City and I learned that the Vatican is completely independent of Rome - even has its own radio station and newspaper! And about 500 people live there. I think it's all a little comical, actually. Also, the Vatican is not allowed to export any of its wares, so I guess you feel like you really have something special if you buy a souvenir there!

Well, in any event, we arrived at the Vatican Museums, passed through security, and got hooked up to our audio guides. Since the tour began at 3:00 and ended at 6:00, including drive time to and from the museums, you can understand why I've been calling it my "turbo-tour" of the museums. I took tons of pictures because we pretty much kept walking the entire time - never got much of a chance to stop and consider all of the art - so I figured I could consider it in my photographs when I got back home! I should also mention that there are 7 km worth of art at the Vatican Museums, so I only saw a tiny fraction of what's kept there.

We were given about 20 minutes to just enjoy the Sistine Chapel. No pictures allowed in there (in the rest of the museum, you can take pictures without flash); so you really do just enjoy Michaelangelo's work (not to mention the various paintings by other artists on the side walls of the chapel). It's quite dark inside actually - they keep the light out to protect all of the frescoes - think just before dusk and that is probably the light level. Also, tour guides aren't allowed to talk inside, so we learned all about it before entering. Most interesting tidbit I learned: it took Michaelangelo 6 years to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, and it took a bunch of specialists 18 years to restore it. Obviously haven't seen it before the restoration, but the colors are very nice now! Also enjoyed being reminded from my art history days freshman year that poor Michaelangelo, sculptor at heart, kept getting commissions from the popes to paint! But you don't say no to the Pope, and I think we're all glad he carried out his commission.

Well, I think I will post a bunch of pictures in the next "parte", number them, and then write anything I can remember from this whirl-wind of a tour for each. I will definitely have to do the Vatican Museums properly some day (I think you need at least a full day), but with all the other stuff to see in Rome, I don't know if I'll fit it in this summer, so we'll see!