Sunday: Borgese reservations
Today was marked by all the police escorts you could ever ask for. When a new Pope gives his first Mass, everyone that requires a police escort comes out of the woodworks. Usually, these escorts involve a lead car with a blue light and some mad Italian in the passenger seat holding an automatic weapon and wildly waving some long-handled flyswatter (that incidentally looks very similar to the tour guides’ wands leading me initially to believe that for a little extra, you could get a police escort for tour 2-B ‘Vatican at Night’) out the window at pedestrians. Following that is usually a Mercedes or BMW with dark windows (carrying the tour group, no doubt). Finally, there is often a fast car driven insanely by some Italian on cocaine. When I say fast, I’m talking a four-door Maserati with tires as wide as most of the sidewalks here. If I were a dignitary or a high-end tour group, I’d rather ride in the Maserati, frankly. Anyway, there were hundreds of these escorts messing up traffic today on the way to and from the Vatican (where we’re told there were over 350,000 people hanging out to get blessed). Luckily, it was an even tempered crowd and no one got hurt, save the one girl who was somehow able to get heat exhaustion and needed an ambulance. How the hell do you get heat exhaustion in 60 degree weather (14 degree for you metric heads), you might ask? My theory: Ecstasy and the huge winter jackets all the Italians seem to think are necessary when the temperature dips below 90. That’s my best guess.
Anyway, thanks to all the suckers hanging out getting holy at Mass, we were able to score last minute reservations for the Borghese Museum. Usually, you have to make reservations a couple of weeks in advance for this private mansion/museum but we got them the day before. Thus far, this has been our best museum experience. They only let 360 people in at a time and for only two hours so the crowds are manageable. Further, the art was fantastic. The mansion was built by Cardinal Borghese, who was something of an art buff and wanted to prove that Renaissance art had reached the pinnacle that Roman art had. So the rooms are a brilliant mixture of ancient and just plan ‘old’ art and, I must say, the man had a keen eye for the art. Probably the coolest piece was a marble statue of Apollo and Daphne. I can’t remember the name of the artist but he was a contemporary of Michelangelo and the man had talent. This particular statue looked like it was more air than marble and the intricacies were mind-boggling. We used most of the two hours we were allotted wandering around and being generally impressed with everything. One funny thing did happen: Over a fireplace in one of the rooms, there is a paint of Jesus and some other stuff. Jesus is at the top center of the paint and, I swear to god, is in a pose that is reminiscent of the first freeze-frame moment of the opening credits of that television classic, Fame. It reminded me so much of said show that I actually blurted out the first and only line of the song that accompanied it (‘Fame! I’m gonna live forever!’). After a bout of giggling, Keith said ‘Man, you’re going to hell for that one.’ Fair enough; it was funny enough that it might actually be worth it…
After the museum, we wandered around the large park it’s in and wound up down near the Spanish Steps. After having a little lunch, we split up and headed back to the hotel for a nap. We’re getting to the point where we’ve seen most of what we came to see so we can afford to take the afternoon off and relax. We met up later in the evening to get dinner and had our first truly awful meal experience. We opted to stay close to our hotel and went to this little restaurant where the proprietor spent most of his time barking orders at his staff and not doing much else. They weren’t that busy but the loud mouthed owner kept ordering his staff to do something else when they were halfway through finishing whatever other task he’d asked them to do just minutes prior. Consequently, nothing really ever got done and the three waiters were harried to say the least. We probably should have left when we saw no fewer than 3 natives get up from their table and complain loudly to him about waiting for their bill, pay and leave in disgust. We sat for the better part of 15 minutes without getting a chance to place our order or even getting place settings. When we did get to place the order, he actually gave us the pad and had us write it down ourselves. Brilliant. The lame bit was that, like many places, there is a 10% charge for ‘service and bread’ levied on all bills. Well, we got zero service and they had run out of bread before we arrived (at 8:30 which is rather early for most Italians). We had high hopes that the food would redeem the restaurant as most of the stuff we saw coming out of the kitchen looked and smelled great. However, we apparently missed the good food section of the menu and ordered strictly from the mediocre section because our food was crap. So we left, came home and went to sleep with bellies full of untasty pasta. An un-fun ending to an otherwise great day.
Monday: The unchristian behavior of Christians at the Vatican
Warning – What follows might strike some of you as sacrilegious in one way or another. Be forewarned and keep in mind that I don’t intend any offense. Unless you’re a throng.
We decided we’d check out the Vatican the day after the swearing in of the new Pope figuring that the crowds would be gone by now. Man, were we wrong. The Sistine Chapel had been closed for a few days due to Pope-related procedures and Monday was it’s grand reopening day. Consequently, most of the throng that had turned out for yesterday’s Mass was already queued up for the museum and chapel by the time we got there (around 8:30). As we approached the ½ mile line, our taxi driver explained that it was a 3-½ hour wait to get in. We quickly took the decision to skip it and just head over to St. Peter’s Cathedral where we found the remainder of the previous day’s hordes forming a massive queue to get in. We lucked out, however, as we discovered that most of them were in line to see the tomb of the John-Paul and that was a separate line. This was about the best luck were going to have with our Vatican experience. We got in the ‘throng’ for St. Peters and waded our way toward the security screening. I say throng because that’s exactly what it was: a massive horde of people with complete disregard for those around them, save the folks in their party. Call me crazy but I’d have thought that most of these folks would be calm and eerily polite since I figured most of them were religiously inclined and on a pilgrimage of some sort. However, they seemed to mostly consist of Tourists from Hell ™. Instead, they were pushy, mean and loud. I almost had to snap a few necks before we even got to security. It was ugly. Oh, and security was about as tight as Jared’s fat pants after the Subway diet. Sure, we all had to put our bags through an X-ray machine but wasn’t going to keep the guy manning said machine from smoking and carrying on a conversation with his buddies near by. We also had to go through a metal detector and when Keith set it off, the guy looked at him, Keith pointed to his pocket and said ‘keys’ and dude just let him pass! I could have gotten through there with a small nuclear device, a gun or even some nail-clippers! Frightening.
After that frustrating waste of time, we were able to get into the cathedral fairly quickly. St. Peter’s is incredibly huge and ornate, to say the least. Apparently, it is the largest of it’s kind in the Catholic world and it has markers on the floor of where other massive Catholic cathedrals would go were you to decide to move them inside it (sort of like those Russian stacking dolls). All the Popes of eons past are housed here up to and including St. Peter himself, who takes center stage in front of the main altar under a seventy foot bronze canopy. Everywhere you turned, there’d be an ex-Pope’s visage bearing down on you. Some of them looked really stern, others serene and still others humble. Most all of them had huge marble tombs in or in front of various pillars and walls. A few of them were incased in glass, backlit caskets which was creepy and (I thought) a little showy. Located near the entrance, behind bulletproof glass, is Michelangelo’s Pieta (Mary holding post-crucified Jesus). I’ve seen photos of it before and, considering the distance we were kept from it and the dim lighting, the photos were more interesting. If you haven’t seen photos, I highly recommend you Google some instead of going to see it in person…even if you’re in Vatican City and 50 feet from the entrance to St. Peter’s. Did I mention I hate throngs?
We wandered around the cathedral for close to an hour before deciding to leave. As I side note, I’ll have you all know that my feet didn’t feel warm, nor did I burst into flames, upon entering the church. I did, however, start to get a rare headache that lasted until we exited. It could have just been the dim lighting and all the flash photography but I deduced that it was the Fame comment from the day prior. Anyway, getting out was a similar hassle to getting in. The dump you out at the gift shop and post office (what a surprise). Brooke nearly got knocked on her butt by some jerk with a post card who seemed to think he could walk, unhindered, through solid objects (like Brooke). Having a need to send a post card myself, I ventured into the gift shop where I nearly killed a rude Japanese girl who attempted to insert herself between me and the display counter where I was attempting to buy a single post card. Had this been my first day in Italy, I probably would have let her in but I’ve been throng-hardened in my travels and would sooner pluck out my own eyes than let someone cut in front of me while I’m in line. The guy next to me, however, wasn’t battle tested so he let her in and she subsequently delayed my purchase by nearly five minutes with incomprehensible questions about some bit of jewelry in the case. It took all my strength not to deliver a deadly head butt to her and rain down a hail of wallops upon her boyfriend who not only allowed this transgression but also paid for the trinket. I was ready to get the hell out of Vatican City. Outside, I filled out the post card and quickly mailed it. We all walked over to the Tiber to cool off and get away from all the tourists. We’d decided to check out this round castle thingy on the Tiber where the Popes would take refuge if the city was under siege but since it was Monday, it was closed. Instead, we walked back to one of the fountains we’d been to before and had an excellent lunch. Food makes it all better. And wine too.
After lunch, we split up. Brooke and I headed back to the hotel where she decided to take a nap before her next session of shopping therapy. I went down to a little café near our hotel and had one of the most enjoyable afternoons in recent memory. I just sat there in a quiet booth, drinking Italian beer and reading. It was lovely. Brooke came down to get me a little before we met up with Keith and Linda for dinner. Tonight, we decided to take the recommendation of the concierge and go to this place near by called Il Chianti. We were very glad we did. The food was awesome and the house red wine was so good that Brooke ordered two to go (actually, she ordered one and I bumped it up to two). It was a fine final Italian dinner with the two of them. We parted ways after the meal, Linda off to do some shopping and us back to finish packing in preparation for our ‘honeymoon’ (‘luna di miele’) in Capri…More on that in the next installment.
Buona Sera,
Shaun.
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