Day 18 -- Rome, Italy

Time to get our religious on. Vatican City. Home of the pope, a bunch of art, the smallest little country in the world, and the bones of St. Peter.

This morning started much better than the previous morning. The water was hot. The floor was clean. The breakfast was…well, it was still crappy…but at least it was free.

We got out as quickly as we could. We cruised by the kitty ruins and saw a group of kittens gathered in one of the ruined temple's courtyards, and imagined that the kitties had called a "State of the Ruins" meeting…which (given a population of 250) was very poorly attended (and those in attendance were either sleeping or cleaning themselves…except for the one who called the meeting…who seemed very agitated…).

The images of frolicking kitties quickly replaced the nastiness of our room, recharging us, and propelling us to our next destination…across the nasty, polluted Tiber, and on to St. Peter's Square.

Nearing the square, we saw multitudes. Thousands of people were gathered in the square. Apparently there was a "mass" going on – and it looked more like a sporting event than a church service. There were people holding banners, waving flags, sporting matching t-shirts…all facing the steps of St. Peter's Basilica, where a single unoccupied chair was sitting under a pavilion.

So we puttered around a bit. I took some pictures of the Swiss Guardsmen (our roommate Chad played one in an upcoming movie, so I wanted some snaps of the real thing for him to compare). I was photographing one of the fountains when God's chosen one appeared.

That's right. Mr. Pope Himself. Benedict the…fifteenth? Sixteenth? I don't know…he's got a bunch of Roman numerals. Anyway, one of the giant projection screens showed a live feed of His Holiness…meeting with some cardinals, and some dudes in suits somewhere on the premises (I'm assuming). Then he climbed up into a car.

But not just any car. It was the world-famous Popemobile. The video showed the Popemobile cruising off…and then, I saw it. The Popemobile. Tearing through a gate on the left-hand side of the basilica. The crowd went nuts, and his Popelinness started doing doughnuts, tearing through the crowd at a ripping 5 miles per hour, blessing everything in sight. I couldn't believe our good fortune – the most sacred man in all of Catholicdom…driving the coolest car in all of Catholicdom…blessing thousands of Catholicdomites. It was awesome.

After his slow-mo show-off, he returned to the pavilion…climbed the steps to his "big white chair," and started reciting some churchy-call-and-response stuff in Italian. Well…we didn't know the calls or the proper responses, so we lingered a little bit…still amazed that we got to see Benedict himself – the only man who would get a phone call from God if he was "one of us" – then made our way around the Vatican wall to the museum, which had an entrance around the corner.

We'd heard that the line to the museum was atrocious. And…had the pope himself not been holding mass in St. Peter's Square the moment we left for the museum…it probably would have been atrocious. Luckily, we'd avoided the rush, and the wait was no more than 5 minutes. Tops.

So, with Rick Steeves waiting and ready to explain all the crap we were looking at, we entered the museum.

First up were the paintings. There were a lot of them. They were arranged chronologically, starting with the 12^th century or so. Erika and I decided to play a little game: "Spot the Open Mouth."

It took us several centuries, but eventually Erika found some dude playing a guitar and singing. Maybe people in the dark ages didn't need to open their mouths? Maybe artists were afraid that it looked like either "yawning" or "yelling." Who knows. But there was a fear (at least, in the artists that we saw) of showing a gaping maw.

But we made our way through the painting rooms relatively unscathed. There was a lot of neat, famous art there, but, as I've said before, I'm no good at describing art, so I'll leave that to the experts.

However, I was always happy when I could recognize one of the more "obscure" Saints out there. Saint Sebastian seemed to be a popular subject for a painting…probably because artists liked painting a dude who'd been shot full of arrows.

Next stop: lunch. We had pizza in a non-descript cafeteria inside the museum. It was not good pizza, but we were so hungry at that point that we convinced ourselves it was the greatest food that mortal man had ever tasted.

Once lunch was finished we headed over to the "statues." Now…I got to hand it to the Romans – they have some pretty freaking cool statues. The Louvre has nothing on the Vatican Museum where statues are concerned. Even the little busted-up statues were fascinating – the Romans did a hell of a job capturing the human form, and actual human emotions (something sorely lacking in many of the earlier paintings we saw, with a few notable exceptions).

We cruised through the ancient Egypt section, then and gazed in awe at some of Raphael's wall murals, and headed for the ultimate in artistic-ness: The Sistine Chapel.

I'm afraid that my memory of the Sistine Chapel will always be painted by the attendants there…who seemed to say "No Pictures" every 15 seconds or so. But in spite of their valiant efforts, it seemed like every person there was sneaking a picture of the chapel, blithely ignoring the earlier warning signs that featured a camera with a line through it.

But the chapel itself…was…as advertised…gorgeous. Unreal. A pain in the neck (if I were in charge of the viewing area, I'd put in some nice, reclining chairs – maybe ones that vibrated when you sat in them…). Once again, words fail me…but, admittedly, it wasn't exactly a "religious" experience. There were about 300 people crammed into smallish (comparatively) chapel…all talking loudly and sneaking shots of the ceiling (two things expressly forbidden by signs at the entrance). It was hard to be awed at something (even as wondrous as the chapel murals) when you're surrounded by a bunch of noisy, jostling tourists. Maybe if people were just silently gazing at the ceiling it could have been something magical…but…as it was crowded and noisy…it didn't have the effect that I envisioned when Robin William's character described it in Good Will Hunting. Maybe we arrange a private viewing next time we're in Rome?

Leaving the chapel, we entered St. Peter's Basilica. And it was…enormous. I'm talking…all of the monuments and cathedrals we'd seen up to this point (the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame, Marienplatz, the Frauenkirche, the Coliseum) could fit neatly inside St. Peter's Basilica with room to spare. Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration…but…just standing inside, I believed it.

I mean, it's no wonder Martin Luther got so pissed off at the Catholic Church – the thing must have cost a fortune. You wonder how many roads, schools, aqueducts, farms, or (even) small churches they could have built just to have that one massive cathedral. I don't know…call me a socialist…but as impressive as these structures are, I always tend to think about the things that weren't built in their place.

But "built" it was, and it was our duty (as obedient tourists) to be totally awed by it. And awed we were. We decided to cruise up to the top of the massive dome for that famous "panoramic view of Rome."

And climb we did…ahead of some fairly obnoxious German teenaged girls, who yukked it up in German the entire way up. When we got to the top it was super-crowded. Like…"shove your way through the crowd" crowded. Don't get me wrong, the view was fantastic…and we got some great snaps of the city…but there was someone covering pretty much every open spot on the circumference of the dome – so bad that you had to wait for someone to leave before you could grab a slice of rail for yourself.

Overwhelmed by the crowd, and seeing what we'd needed to see, we descended...all the way down to the crypts. We couldn't see all of the folks buried there…but we got to see the first level. Now, for a crypt, it was impeccably clean and tidy. It was more like a "nice basement apartment" than a "tomb." I was hoping to get a whiff of some decomposing popes and noblemen, but all I got was the pleasant aroma of scented candles and flowers.

We made our way past the final resting place of…maybe…a dozen popes (including the late great John Paul II), and headed back out into St. Peter's Square to plan our next move.

We were finished with the Vatican. Reading this again, I realize it comes off a bit petulant – the art was all boring and closed-mouthed, the Sistine Chapel was crowded and noisy, St. Peter's Basilica was garish, St. Peter's dome was crowded, the crypts were clean…et cetera. One could extrapolate, from reading this, that I hated the Vatican. Well, one would be right. I did.

Kidding. I liked the Vatican. I'm not going to write about the hours I spent working my way through the sculpture garden, or the paintings…examining each work with a curious eye. Because it'd sound something like this:

- The first painting was from the 12^th century, and it was a woman with a halo over her head. It was dark, but the woman looked nice.

- The next painting was of Jesus. It was strange, but medieval artists can't seem to decide whether Jesus' feet were nailed together to the cross, hanging loose, or standing on a small ledge near the base of the cross.

- The next painting was of a bunch of saints. I don't know who they were, but they looked cool.

- The next painting was of a creepy baby (who was probably Jesus) giving a Boy Scout Salute to the faithful. I don't think Medieval people knew what babies looked like, and they all have a creepy grown-up look on a naked baby body.

- The next painting was Raphael's something-or-other that's pretty famous. It's got a crazy boy with googly-eyes, and Jesus is standing on a precipice, doing something heroic. The colors are really vivid.

- The next painting was another one of Jesus. This time his feet were nailed to the cross. If you're scoring at home, that's "Ledge: 1, Nailed: 1, Free-hanging: 0"

- The next painting…

And so on. Okay…actually, that was pretty cool. Maybe I should have done that instead of the complain-o-fest that I've got now. The only thing is this entry alone would be about 200 pages long, and it'd start to look like this after a while:

- The next sculpture was an Egyptian god. He had a wolf for a head.

- The next sculpture was another Egyptian god. She had a sword.

- The next sculpture was another Egyptian god. He looked normal.

- The next sculpture was another Egyptian god. He looked pretty normal too, except he had a staff.

- The next room had a mummy in it. It looked dead.

Yeah…once again, looking back, that would be kind of cool too. God, I need to write an art appreciation book sometime.

But the Vatican was finished (that was another Jesus reference, for the faithful). Our next move was another "Steeves Recommended Walk." This time it was through the "crusty" part of Rome…just south of our hotel…on the leeward side of the Tiber (what direction is leeward? Left? Right? Up?). We got to the starting point and…yes…as advertised…it was pretty dang crusty. Not "dangerous" crusty (there were telltale signs of "prosperity" all over the dang place…shining through the thick crust), but it was definitely not as polished as the other touristy spots we'd visited. Once again we found ourselves chasing a few other couples who were reading from the same Steeves guidebook that we were using. Oh, Steeves.

For dinner, we chose a "crusty" restaurant near the "crusty" Piazza, and had some "crusty" bread and "not-crusty" pasta. Then we retired to our "crusty" room, and fell asleep quickly, and crustily.

Tomorrow is the "bonus day." We'd gotten most of the popular sites done in our first two days, so day three was reserved for the "less popular sites" in the area, including an honest-to-God catacomb, a pagan-bathhouse-turned-cathedral, and a tomb decorated with human bones. Should be macabre. Until then…