Roman Holiday 2

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I am in despair! My camera batteries died and I did not get pictures of the breakfast room :-( I guess taking 6 rolls of film in the Vatican did it...

The Royal BC Museum,s collection could almost fit in some of the rooms in the Vatican Museum. The sculpture rooms are so long that standing at one end you can barely see the other. My favourite was the newest gallery added in the 18th century - the mosaic floors carpet the way and walls cut-away for each massive marble statue tower up beside me as I walk and snap and snap - pictures of the black and white mosaic vases on the floor, the sculptures - particularly the carved marble fabric that seems to have just stopped moving before I turned the corner - the painted walls, the painted ceilings, the painted door frames, window frames, painted arches, every bit of this place is painted! Leanne and I agreed that you could spend every day for a year in some of the rooms and not run out of things to look at. Often the ceilings are covered in portraits or scenes from the Bible or moral lessons played out in symbolic scenes and each has a painted frame, goldleafed and decadent.

The Sistine Chapel ends the tour. The crowd thins out just before the entrance where signs remind us not to take pictures, not to speak, and to make sure our shoulders and knees are covered. I come around the corner and the room is taller and shorter than I imagined, people pushing against one another and craning their necks to see the ceiling. A number of stick figure pictures remind us not to recline on the floor (darn!) I look up. I look up and see God reaching for Adam and it looks so far away. There are nine frescos on the ceiling and each part of the chapel is painted. The audio guide explains each painting. I keep pressing the buttons and looking up. My neck is killing me, but I can,t help but look and look and look. The guards reinforce the rules by yelling out, "no pictures" and "shhhhhhhhhhhhhh" -- amazing that they know it is the English-speakers breaking the rules ;-)

We are leaving our nunnery now :-) taking our bags to the train station and going to see the Colosseum, Pantheon and Trevi Fountain before heading to Siena. The busses had stopped running too early last night and we ended up going for a walk past St Peter,s and then for dinner.

More soon... Thanks for your notes! Ciao, Melania

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