Trip Continued - On to Rome

The day we flew to Rome, which I believe was a Tuesday, began at 2:00 in the morning. We had returned home from Galilee at about 10 at night, and at that point, everyone showered and packed. I woke everyone up at 2, and we were in the car by 2:30. We arrived at the airport at about 3:15 at the airport, 2 and a half hours before our flight and we hardly had time to spare.

Mary and Hannah were marked as suspicious, and were stopped at every security check along the way. They also went through my suitcase, but it didn't pan out as thrilling as the two young girls' suitcases, so I wasn't quite harrassed as much as they were. We arrived at our gate with about 20 minutes to spare and soon, took off for Rome...or should I say Frankfurt. We flew through Germany and again, the girls really don't like the Frankfurt airport. We finally arrived in Rome early afternoon and headed to the hotel.

After settling into our rooms, we decided to make our way to Alfredo's, the original Italian restaurant that invented the famous Alfredo Fettuccine pasta dish. As the story goes, Alfredo's wife was terribly ill after having a baby and he was worried she would die. He went into his kitchen and determined he would make something she would eat. So he boiled up some homemade noodles, doused them with real butter and stirred in grated parmesan cheese. And voila! - (Yea, I know that's French) - she ate it and it a-save-ed her life-a! (There's the Italian)

Of course, when we arrived, it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, so we went back to the hotel, slept off our jet lag and went back for dinner.

End day one.

Day two began with a tour of the Vatican. The Vatican is located in Vatican City, which is a country all by itself - it is not a part of Italy but is a nation all its own. Strange, huh? Thousands upon thousands of people converged on the grounds, of course with the hope of a glimpse of the Pope, which would miraculously take years if not centuries off their time in purgatory but that's a whole other story.

I am going to flip quickly through these pictures and try to explain what you are seeing but the first thing you need to know is that the Vatican is a museum. They have artifacts from every archeological dig known to man and if the dig was in Italy, they claimed the best items in the name of the Pope. So when I entered, thinking I was entering a church, I quickly realized that it is kilometer after kilometer of pagan images and man-worship. Mary was evident but not as strongly promoted as the concept of Pope.

That leads to the second thing you have to know. The point of the Vatican is to pound into the visitor the fact that Peter was given the keys to the kingdom by Jesus, therefore the Pope has ultimate authority here on earth. Painting after painting after statue depicts the scene of Jesus handing keys to Peter, usually with St. Peter's cathedral in the background.

And finally, for every painting of the life of Christ that is on display, there are four to five paintings of the lives of various popes. That speaks for itself.

Okay, on to the pictures:

You are not allowed to take pictures in the Sistine Chapel and you are really not supposed to talk either, so this is a poster of some of the paintings. This was my favorite room of all and it was rather small in comparison to the rest of the Vatican. I think I liked it the best because all it's paintings mainly focussed on three things - Christ's life, Moses' life or various people holding various forms of the scriptures, representing the transfer of the Word through the ages. In addition to these pictures, there was one REALLY AWESOME painting by Michelangelo of the final judgment. Incredible...I could have sat and looked at that alone for an hour...
This is just an example of a hallway of artifacts taken from archaeological digs...these are busts of Romans...
This was pretty impressive - it's Nero's bath tub - it was about 16 feet in diameter - a small pool, per se...you can see how big it is by looking at the people standing to the right...
This is the hall of maps - nearly a kilometer of large wall hangings, all mapping out Italy and Rome's empire - all done without satellite imaging or even an airplane...interesting, huh?

This is the ceiling of the hall of maps...why let good space go to waste?

This is inside St. Peter's Cathedral. Let me explain what you are seeing. That dark brown gazebo in the back center is built above where Peter is supposedly buried. Only the pope is allowed to stand inside that gazebo and administer a service. It is MASSIVE! Then throughout the main room here there are statues of various saints - my favorite was probably the one of Helen, Constantine's mother, who promoted using the cross as a Christian symbol. Also I think a lot of popes are buried within the walls and floor...

Can you also see the wooden barrier to the right of the picture? This was a long wooden barricade, maybe 12 feet wide and ran nearly the length of the room. If you looked inside the barrier, there were mosaics on the floor, similar to what you see in the middle of this picture, but each mosaic represents the biggest catholic church structures in the world. Very strange...they didn't want anyone walking on them...

Oh, and there is a pope buried in a glass box that you can see there, too! Very yucky...

This is outside, in the square looking at St. Peter's Cathedral. The picture doesn't do it justice, except for the fact you can see how little the people are and how big the buildings are. Pillared buildings surround the square and there are specific points that you can stand on that give the image of open spaces or closed pillars - hard to explain - you'll just have to go to see what I mean. Do you see around the roofline of the buildings are statues? Various saints throughout the ages - they are massive...

After the Vatican, we went to...Alfredo's, of course! There is a story behind this, as well. A few years ago my mother took my son and his best friend (Hannah's brother) to Rome. They went to Alfredo's twice on their trip and to this day, Nathan and Christopher vow to return, solely for the fettuccine. So, since they went twice, we HAD to go THREE times...oh, the competitive spirit of siblings...

After Alfredo's, we went...shopping, of course!

And after shopping we had a fashion show in the hotel rooms! Very fun...

Final thoughts on the Vatican...

I love a good museum. The next time I go to Rome, I am going to try to see if they would close their doors and only let me wander the halls for about three days straight. I don't know if they'll do it, but there is SO much to see and it is VERY, VERY crowded that it makes it hard to soak it all in.

As soon as I got past thinking I was entering a place of worship (God-worship), then I was fine. But there is so much worship of man going on in that place, it was rather overwhelming at times. So much history, so much abuse - I want to watch my Luther movie again now that I have seen the splendor of the Vatican, so that I can understand his outrage against the sacrifice forced upon the common man to create this heaven on earth.

Okay...next post we'll see more of Rome...