My Trip to France and Italy, Day 12

We're headed off towards the Vatican, but first we need some money. This is Adam, another Oral Roberts University student out in Rome doing missions training type work, like Bill. Adam, Bill, [and later on Steve] joined us on our tour of the Vatican.

Here we have St Peters Basilica, and under that red awning is the Pope.

Here's a closer look. [The Pope is the one in white, sitting in the middle.] There was a front section, with chairs, for special groups & people I guess, and a back section, for tourists to stand.

We stood and listened to the Pope [and some other guy up there, who was leading the service.] speak for quite some. We showed up a little late, so we didn't get to see the Pope-mobile.

Here's a look around while the Pope speaks.

They had giant TV screens set up around so you could see what was going on up there.

I took a few shots while the Pope spoke. It was in Latin, and it was a lot of mumbling.

Here's another shot of St. Peters. There were statues all over the place.

When he started saying the Lord's Prayer (Pater Noster..), then you could understand what he was saying. An everyone (who knew it) said it along with him. Latin 2 seemed useful for that brief 30 seconds.

There were quite a few people sitting up front with the Pope.

Obelisk in Piazza San Pietro.

Here's the inscription on that obelisk.

So... I didn't know the thing was still zoomed in... so here's a shot of me and Becky, and St. Peters that was... well, less than good, I guess.

And here's a better shot of Becky and me and St. Peters. We had to kinda dress up, as you're not allowed to wear shorts or tank tops when you go in to St. Peters.

The security line to get in to see the Pope was pretty strict. (like airport, strict). Metal detectors, security guards, and all that.

Here's a clip of the Pope talking.

More Pope talking. He talked for a while, then the other dude spoke... He spoke in a number of different languages.

I'm assuming these are the official uniforms for Vatican officials of some sort. Yeah, not the greatest.

Here's the line of people waiting to bow before the Pope and kiss his ring.

Here's another guy in a bad outfit.

And here's a monk walking the street.

After the Pope finished speaking, the streets get quite crowded.

We saw this kid playing the other day as well. He was really good (and seemed to be making a decent amount of money, as well).

And here we have another Lotus. It was beautiful.

Here's the entrance to the Vatican Museum.

The paintings on the ceiling of the Vatican Museum were quite ornate. The ceilings themselves were quite ornate.

Here's a look down a stretch of hallway in the Vatican Museum. Like I said, it was all quite ornate.

There was a ton of Latin inside the Vatican Museum, and so I took a few shots.

Here's another ceiling painting. Most of them were about Jesus. Makes sense, eh?

Here's some Latin on a jar. Right next to this jar was a nice fan.. so I stood there for a while.

More latin.

There was an entire hallway filled with giant tapestries.

Here's a look at a few of those tapestries. There was special lighting, and no windows (or flash photography) in that room.

This room's ceilings had intricate carvings.

Another tapestry. I can't even begin to guess how long something like this must've taken to make.

As we got closer to the Sistine Chapel, the ceilings got more and more ornate. This one was so colorful, and seemed to go on forever.

Here's a clip of that same colorful ceiling.

There was an entire room filled with giant maps made throughout the centuries... So there were maps with the "New World" as this giant blob of land off to the side. Most of them were of Italy (naturally) or the whole world. And they were all gigantic.

Here's a painting on the wall of the room just before the entrance to the Sistine Chapel.

Here's the side wall of that same room.

Here's a look around that room.

This is a picture of one of the Pope's Bibles. They had a number of them (from different Popes) all locked here under glass.

Here's a mosaic on the floor. the entire room's floor was a mosaic like this, but this section was roped off.

More ceiling paintings on our way to the Sistine Chapel.

And we're finally in the Sistine Chapel. We were quickly informed that we weren't allowed to take any pictures, and weren't supposed to speak. So I started by taking a few quick "sneaky" pictures (the few from the trip that actually turned out to be somewhat decent).

For a "sneaky" shot, this one wasn't too shabby. You have "The Creation of Man" in the center there.

And here's a less good shot of the last judgement.

Finally, I just decided to screw the whole "don't take pictures" thing, as had pretty much every other tourist in the place, so I started taking pictures all over the place. Here's another shot of the ceiling. [another one of those things that had to be seen to be appreciated, I think. None of the pictures do it justice.]

Here's a better shot of the Last Judgement. I can see how this would take a while.

Here's a clip looking around the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. It was kinda dark in there.

Here's a closeup of the Creation of Man.

These giant paintings of the life of Christ lined the sides of the chapel.

Another look at the Sistine Chapel, first the paintings along the wall, then the ceiling. Again, it's kinda dark.

Here's the Last Judgement again. In the center, slightly right, you can see one of the angels just holding the skin of some guy.

Here's a model of St. Peters.

And there's St. Peters, looking out the window of the Museum.

Here's me and St. Peters.

Here's some amazing stained glass they had on display.

This is the spiralling ramp that leads to the exit of the Vatican Museum.

Here's that ramp again. There were kids running down it hand in hand... undoubtedly waiting for that poor slow-moving soul to get clotheslined.

Here's Becky, Maryrose, and me at the fountain in front of St. Peters. We're waiting to meet up with Bill, Adam, and Steve.

And this is Adam. You've seen him before, but now it's official.

And now we meet Steve. Like I said, they all turned out to be really good, fun guys. It took Steve little time to make me look like a complete and utter fool ("That's a birdhouse?") so, nicely done, Steve.

We decided to head out and get some food before going in to the Vatican Treasury.

This is Michelangelo's Pieta. It shows Mary holding the body of Christ just after he was taken down from the cross.

This is a better shot of the Pieta.

And this is pretty much the exact same shot. I can't tell which one is clearer.

And here we have the domed celing, with more amazing artwork.

Here's a look around St. Peters on the inside.

Here's the alter inside St. Peters

The statue of Peter sits inside St Peters, and there was a line of people waiting to rub his feet (and many said prayers, etc..). His feet are so worn by this point that you can't see toes on it anymore.

Here you can see his worn feet. [I didn't take this picture.. I just found it. The line was so long you couldn't ever really get a shot of his feet while we were there.]

Here's another look at that alter.

This is where St. Peter was buried. They build the church around his tomb.

Many people stopped here to pray.

Looks like we've got Latin and Greek now.

Here's Becky and me inside St. Peters. We're headed to the Treasury (or at least we're trying to find it) at this point.

Here's a list of all the Popes. You can see that Peter's name is written a little bigger than all the others.

We're at the entrance to the Vatican Treasury now. This golden rooster sits by the doorway.

On the upper floor of the treasury, there was a lot of pretty nice stuff. Golden crosses, communion instruments, etc. some of them had jewels on them, etc. Nice stuff.

They had information written in 5 languages explaining where the item came from (you can see the card near the bottom). Many were given by nations, or old national leaders.

This ring is bigger than my room. That jewel was about an inch across.

There were also a number of golden busts of Christ, Apostles, and saints.

More golden crosses.

Golden Peter and Paul. Peter and Paul are the saints and protectors of the city, so you see statues of them everywhere. Peter has the sword, and Paul has the keys to the city.

When we got to the lower floor, photography was not allowed, and the items got a lot more elaborate. We were pretty much alone down there, so I took pictures. This is a goblet so encrusted with jewels it's probably too nice to ever use. (Steve and I agreed that if we had a goblet like that, we'd have to use it at least once.)

Someone mentioned that this was the largest one of them that exists. (one of them refers to that jewel in the center, I'm guessing, cause I've seen larger pieces of red felt before.) Let's see, for a size equivalent, that center jewel is about the size of a baseball.

Lots of diamond stars.

Here's the statue of Paul outside of St. Peters. You can see the keys in his right hand.

There's Peter on the other side, with the sword.

And here's a last look at St. Peters as we are leaving.

Here you can see that security stuff I was talking about before.

After St. Peters, we decided to head to Trevi fountain. Adam had to take off, so it was Maryrose, Mindy, Becky, Bill, Steve, and me. Once we got off the train, we were right next to this crypt that Bill had told us about, so we headed on in. Photography was not allowed at all, and it was really small and crowded, so my pictures that I tried to quick take did not turn out very good. You can sorta get the idea from some of them.

They took the skeletons of monks when they died, boiled off the flesh, etc.. and then used the bones to make artwork. The ceiling is decorated with vertibrae.

There were a lot of bones, and a ton of skulls everywhere. It was so surreal it looked almost cheesey and fake, like a Tales from the Crypt episode, only it was all real.

Steve told me that He and Adam had gone through the crypt a few days earlier, and Adam had taken pictures of it while Steve stood guard. I said I'd love to see them, so I gave him my card, with my email address on it. A few days after I returned home, I got an email from Adam, with 4 amazing pictures. So these next 4 are courtesy of Adam.

Some of the full skeletons that were mummified still had what looked like flesh attached.

That's a lot of skulls.

This is what I was told: There was a Pope way back when that was if not in charge, then at least a part of getting this crypt created. While he was Pope, his neice died. So they had her skeleton affixed to the ceiling in the last section. This is her. The Pope's two nephews (who also died young) are in the back of this section.

Here we are at Trevi fountain. We all got ice cream, and then just sorta hung out at the fountains edge for a long while.

And here's a good shot at the fountain itself. The legend is that if you toss in a coin (over your shoulder) you'll return to the fountain some day. When we were there, someone said the legend was that if you threw money in, you'd meet your true love, so I tossed my wallet in.

Here's a look around Trevi fountain. I was standing in someone's way, so I had to move quickly.

Here's Becky and me and the Trevi fountain, only my head managed to block out most of the fountain.

I did better this time.

Here's another look around the Trevi fountain. We wondered what that giant screen was for.

Around the fountain, they had those street merchanats (Okay, the street merchants were everywhere in Italy. It didn't matter where you were). Anyway, here at Trevi fountain, they were selling the most useless of useless crap. Most were selling these stressball like things that retained the shape you put them in, and they had little sticker eyes attached, and some yarn for hair. They'd walk around, making faces with these things, then shoving them in your face, and demanding that you purchase them. The same two guys kept coming around, and shoving them in our faces and telling us to buy them, and I think I was fairly polite about saying no. Then they started making these blob things with giant breasts, and making it a point to give them nipples, then shoving them in our faces again, and demanding that we buy them. By then I was annoyed, and mentioned something about how useless those things were... so Maryrose quickly purchased one. So here's a clip of her trying to make something resembling anything with the one she bought.

Here's Maryrose with her creation. Shortly thereafter, one of the two guys came back, and tried to sell us another one... and again, I said no, and looked away, and then he grabbed my hand and stuck it in there, and I got upset, and told him "forcefully" to leave.

Here's me with the Trevi fountain.

These Pace (Peace) flags were everywhere in Italy. Seriously, almost every street had at least one on it. It was rare to find an apartment complex that didn't have at least one or two hanging down. Even the Happy Rent place had one.

We're now headed to the Pantheon.

And this is the Pantheon.

And here's me and the Pantheon.

Another shot at the front of the Pantheon.

Here we are, inside the Pantheon. Once a pagen temple, it was transformed into a church.

Here's a look around the Pantheon. The center of the dome is open to the air, and there are drains in the floor.

More anti-war graphitti. That's a bomb in black. This symbol was found in a number of places throughout Rome.

So Maryrose was gonna dye my hair red. here's the before shot.

Here she is, dying my hair.

She also wanted to dye my beard...

Yeah... This look they all found quite funny...

And here it is, finished. It's more noticeable when it's dry. The shower was kinda fun. With red dye all over the place, it looked like the small shower was filled with blood.. like some wretched B-movie, or soemthing.