Silver Case

This morning I picked the first (and so far only) tomato that matured from the big pile of seeds we harvested in Italy last autumn. If I wasn’t leaving for the North American Handmade Bike Show tomorrow morning, I probably would have left it longer on the vine to ripen, but alas…

Our Big Fat Vatican Adventure

Started out the day with a they-say-hard-to-get tour of ‘the Scavi’ also known as the Vatican Necropolis (city of the dead) also the site of St Peter’s Tomb (or so the church believes!).

On paper, it sounds appealingly sinister: crawling through a secret underground chambers of the Vatican.

In practice, it was fifteen old and overweight tourists crammed into a dimly-lit excavation of a former Roman cemetery that had been entombed by one of the many cycles of building works of St Peters Basilica. The temperature was high, probably 85F, but the humidity was higher. Our heavily-accented narrator explained it was the ‘conservatory ideal’ 98%. It felt 100% not ideal to the gawkers. People were gasping for the slightest traces of a breeze, or for cool marble chunks to lean against, anything to help us through the 90minute tour.

What I want to know is are there bones in this sarcophagi?

Group thinking seemed to be, “ask few questions and you’ll find fresh air sooner.” Everyone except Agent Doggett. He was critically concerned about the presence of bones in the room as well as precise dating (to the nearest one century) of the floor tiles. And nothing would stand in his way of the truth.

Was this floor tile laid in the second or the third century Anno Domini?

By the end we finished up, reached the crux, St Peters tomb and the (*cough*) tomb of the WW2 Pope, Pius XII.

But that’s not all!!!!

After that, it was a long walk around the other side of the Vatican to the Vatican Museums.

Basically everyone wants to see the Sistine Chapel, first, foremost, and generally solely. But the route there forces through a massive chicane of centuries of treasures horded by ancient popes. It’s impressive, but rapidly fatiguing. Crowds are thick, access is bad (especially w/ a stroller, like Ling was stricken with), and temperatures are high. As a side note, we were warned that at REALLY busy times, they do five-minute gated entries to each room. Imagine that. :-&

Here’s my opinion on what was nice to look at, and everything else might be scurried by:

1) The Apollo Belvedere
2) The Laocoön
3) The Belvedere Torso
4) Most (but not all!) of Raphael/Van Aelst tapestries

The three statues you’ll enjoy more if you read the Rick Steve’s context of them.

Sadly, by the time you get to the Sistine Chapel, you are almost certainly physically tired, irritatingly hot, and mentally fatigued. Now prepare to to enter the chapel…

What’s inside the chapel? A not huge, but very tall room, packed to the gills with other tourists, all staring straight up, circulating by brownian motion. There is a murmur-din, punctuated regularly by the ushers ‘shushing’ the crowd, and when it gets too noisy, playing the pre-recorded dire-threats-in-nine-languages tape. The paintings are hard to see because they’re so high up, and I couldn’t find a position that allowed me to ever follow the paintings without many 180d rotations. It all was enormously frustrating and annoying to see and I must give the Sistine Chapel experience a C- grade at best. I’d rather be in there alone with noone except a fan and some binoculars, or, maybe the smarter thing to do is read a big coffee table book of the Sistine Chapel. It IS amazing, but I just cannot see and enjoy the details with an environment like that.

Who wants some more?

Matt and I, for a jolly, went back the next day, near quittin’ time, to see St Peters Basilica. When we walked in, it was big and impressive. Matt read from his book that it held 60,000 devotees and was the length of two soccer pitches. Yeah the place was big, but 60,000 people? Oh, well that’s because you don’t immediately see the massive wings to the church which make it 2/3rds bigger than it even appears when you first see. It is truly a gargantuan, awe-inspiring place. Really staggering. I did a speed loop around the place… lots of popery stuff and things which didn’t hold my attention. I was more attracted to just the incredible scale of the place. I must admit it is the most impressive building I’ve ever seen. (Which, all signs point to, was Pope Julius’ intention).

Last and Least… The Vatican Radio Museum Tour

The Vatican Radio office has a museum of radio. Marconi set up their first broadcasting station back in the 1920s. I sent them a note requesting a tour. Considering I’m a licensed amateur radio operator in two countries, and Matt is a Doctor of Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, we should have been shoe-ins. Alas I received this ‘reply’.

The visit to the museum is only for groups In every case when it will be to roma you phone the 0669884883 brinzaglia

Moi-doo-doo.

Meanwhile, back in Florence

My advice here, very simple:

1) Don’t go to the Museum Of Science till it is actually finished. Even if they pay you to go inside, it’s not worth it.
2) The Uffizi is fatiguingly huge. Prepare to see the same three scenes over and over. There will be quite a few paintings of solemn people Adoring the Magi. Look for the Lippi paintings. Avoid Adoring the Magi too much, there will be many, many opportunities to do so.
3) Go to the Academy and see David and see the Prisoners. This was the high point of Florence art for me. You can leave afterwards, staying just gets you a circuit around many uninteresting plaster busts and a Robert Mapplethorpe (I am not joking!) exhibition.

Want to see anything else?

I enjoyed the cathedral in Siena.