Day 5: Wed. Aug 22. Vatican City and Boarding the Cruise

Today we were up bright and early to meet our early entry tour of the Vatican.  It started at 7:30 am at the Vatican Museums.  Our guide was Chad from Colorado.  He has lived in Rome for 13 years studying fine art.  He gave us about 30 min of background information on the Sistene Chapal and a zillion different interesting facts, anecdotes and things to look for.  I am very happy for this, or I really wouldn’t have know what I was looking at.  My favorite story was that all winged birds were considered messangers of the gods/foretellers of the truth… even chickens.  Seeds would be thrown in front of chickens before battle, and if the chickens ate it, that meant you would be lucky in battle and win.  If they didn’t eat it, you were sure to lose, so they wouldn’t start the battle.  One leader threw some seed down and the chickens didn’t eat it… He got impatient and said if they won’t eat, let them drink and he went into battle anyway.  He suffered a blistering defeat and learned the lesson… Heed the chickens!

Anyways, back to the Vatican museums and the Sistine chapel.  The Sistine chapel is one of those places where you just stand in awe of almost perfectly preserved artwork from another age.  It really is something when you are standing in the middle of the room surrounded by all this art and storytelling.  It was also nice to be there early before the hoards of people came, like later in the day when we passed through again.  It struck me how popular the Creation of Adam section is, iconic really, when that is only one teeny tiny part of the overall work… and to me there were much more interesting parts of it.  I liked the last judgement wall and the good vs evil story in that.

We also wandered around the Vatican Museums for a bit, and man are they massive!!!  One could probably spend a week in there and not see it all.  We saw a little of everything.  Tapestries strung with gold that took five – six years to make (each!)  Lots of sculptures and portraits.  And many, many other trinkets.  I found it interesting how Egyptian influenced many of the areas, exhibits and settings were.
From there we went right to St. Peter’s Basilica.  The place is absolutely massive.  It was another case of me seeing it in movies and on tv and not really understanding the scale of it.  As a building project I can’t imagine how it was designed and built.  I looked at Kory at one point and said that it seems like there are about two dozen little churches inside.  It really made me feel small…  Which I guess is probably the idea.   There were some beautiful sculptures and I really liked the detail in almost the entire building.

That was enough church for me for one day… so then we wandered around the area a little, walked through some parks and then headed back to the hotel to head out for the cruise ship.
I had prearranged a transfer with Stefano’s Rome Cabs that I found on trip advisor.  Our driver was right on time, spoke no English and got us to the port in about an hour.
Check in didn’t take more than about a half hour and then we were on the ship.  I was sooooooo excited ! ! !   We have a nice big balcony room… #8187.
We spent the late afternoon wandering the ship and getting our bearings.  It is the largest ship I have been on, with around 4,500 passangers and 1,700 crew members.  Then we sat at the bar in Spice H2O., the adult pool deck area, drinking Bahama Mamas and Moscow Mules and it REALLY felt like we were on vacation!  We spent our time there going through our Rome photos and deleting bad ones, editing good ones and then it was time for sail away.  We are sitting on our balcony with the soothing sound of waves hitting the ship as the sun sets.  This is the life!