I had a proper tourist day today. Got up at six in the morning to wait in line for the Sistine chapel. Despite arriving three hours early, there were a number of people ahead of me. But it was cleverly done and I got in without a fuss.
The chapel is... well those of you who have seen it know, but at first it seemed like being trapped in a crayon box. The colors were so vivid that for a moment I couldn't make out what they created. It was like a crayon box in another way too, in that there were so many people in there I couldn't see the floor. Once I planted myself however and looked up, the images came together in an astonishing way. Unbelievable.
From there I saw the rest of the Vatican museum and then moved onto St Peter's. Now, I've seen a lot of churches, but this one shook me out of my architectural stupor. So beautiful, and to see the Pieta, even behind glass, was a wonderful experience. My favorite part of the morning however, besides eating watermelon, was in realizing that while it took 3 hours to get into the museum, it took about 3 minutes to get into the church. Classic.
I honestly did mean to go back after that and take a well-deserved nap (I haven't slept a lot in the last few nights due to the heat), but I kept noticing how very close I was to this piazza, or that fountain and in the end I didn't get back to the hostel until 7pm and by that point it was too late to nap, so I took a shower, went to the Spanish steps, where I was accosted by the rudest rose-seller I've ever had the misfortune to meet, and then came back to make a bit of dinner and wind down the day.
It was good that I ate something solid, for most of my calories lately have been in drinks, fruit, ice cream, along with the gallon or so of water. It's just too hot for me to be hungry until the sun goes down and takes the worst of the heat with it, but all the sugar I'm ingesting is not good for me.
Tomorrow I plan to see the main ruins. I saw the Parthenon today, but it had been turned into a church. Which seems wrong to me somehow...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment