Rome and the Vatican

This post is the greatest clichè of all: I liked Rome. I retract the previous imperative to go to Greece and hereby replace it with ‘go to Rome’. How fickle am I.

Rome is rediculous. I believe the Italians say ‘non basta una vita’ ie. A lifetime is not enough. Being here, it is obvious why. In the last few days we’ve sat drinking on the Spanish Steps, befriended Hungarians, Indonesians and Bangladeshis, watched a massive and incomprehensible Catholic ceremony at St Peter’s basilica where I was only about 25m from the Pope for many minutes, explored ancient castles, ate cornetti and drunk cappucini for breakfast, had far too much pizza and gelato, found out something of Italy’s recent history (so, so complicated) etc etc etc. Oh yeah, and visited the Colluseum, the Pantheon, the Sistene Chapel, the rest of the Vatican, and all sorts in between.

Everywhere in Rome is exciting. It’s not exciting in Napoli’s ‘alive’ sort of way, but it’s exciting in an ‘everything I can see is amazing’ sort of way. Even walking between the famous attractions are streets full of austere buildings, random Roman ruins, statues, fountains and piazze that you’ve never heard of but which could rightly be in a museum, and all sorts of wonderful food. We were on top of the St Angelo castle today looking out over the city and in every direction poked up church towers and obelesks. Yes, obelesks. Apparently Rome has nine of them. We found six or seven quite by chance.

I won’t go through everything we’ve done in Rome because it’s just too much. Anyway, you know about the Colloseum and what it looks like. It’s the same in real life, only, well, real. The Pantheon was more amazing because I didn’t know what it was before getting there. It’s a simple structure on the inside: just one big dome. Very big. Like the Colloseum, the Sistene Chapel was good but not such a surprise. But getting there was: you walk through hallway after hallway in the Vatican, all full of amazing art and statues and maps and all sorts. Every floor is covered in beautiful tiles and every roof in beautiful paintings and mosaics. Tony explains all the Bible stories to me. There are a whole series of rooms that are all painted by Raphael. A lot of the other artists are famous too: Michaelangelo of course, Reni, etc. I’m not much of an art critic but my favourite painting was Raphael’s ‘the transfiguration’.

Friday was a public holiday in Rome. It’s the name-day of the city’s patron saint(s). I think this is why when we went to St Peter’s basilica in the Vatican this morning there was a cermony on. The line to get in wasn’t too crazy but when inside it was. The Pope was up the front! All sorts of bishops and cardinals and whatever else from all over the world were in attendance. They were chanting and singing Latin hymns and waving the incense round and eating the body of Christ in communion (Catholics believing in transubstantiation. Thank you form 7 history). It was all very proper, except for amongst us tourists at the back where it was little more than a sanctified moshpit as everyone fought to get close to the Pope and flash their cameras. After the ceremony everyone piled out into the sqaure with tens of thousands of others to await Papa’s appearance at one of high up windows. He duly came and made a short speech to welcome everyone, bless various people, and wish us all a happy holiday. We were very lucky to see it and it was great.

That night we contintued on our crazy way to find the Villaggio Globale. This is a nightclub run in an abandoned abitoir. They do different events every night, often off the mainstream I think. The night we were there Rome’s Sri Lankan community was out in force with a Sri Lankan group playing. It was pretty crazy. Then on the way home we got lost and stumbled across a free (of course) party run by the Communist party. It was great… they played heaps of great music from my school days and before (how old am I getting?) and we stayed there all night, eventually catching the first train home in the morning. Rome is crazy. Go. Apparently its shopping is good too… not sure about this one though: