Rome to Casa Biondo (8/19/19)

Vatican Day! Checked out of the hostel but left my big backpack to pick up later in the afternoon. Walked partway to Vatican City and bought a couple apples and bananas from a small grocery. Turns out you have to weight your produce when you buy it and the scale prints out a little sticker that the cashier scans. Today I learned. My museum ticket wasn’t until 1pm so I spent a couple hours reading in Piazza Cavour, which had its own evolving struggle. As the tree shadow I was sitting in moved I would scoot a little bit now and then in what happened to be the direction of a nearby bench. This would then result in the bench’s occupant immediately vacating the premises as a weird redhead with a backpack and book siting on the grass had just scooted closer to them. R.I.P.

Finished my walk over to Vatican City and arrived at 1 to absolute madness and 90 degree heat. You have to go through what amounts to an airport security check to enter, and everyone is overheated and overcrowded, which make the staff cranky so that when I asked a couple questions I got blown off and ignored. mmmmmmm not happy with my entry experience.

I did the Egyptian exhibits first, then the statue hallway, hall of animals, Roman pottery, and then finally the chapel itself. All very pretty exhibits of course, I was just boiling and getting grumpy so I didn’t enjoy the first few as much. Too hot and too many people. I took a 15 minute break in the shade near where the big tour groups were meeting (I did eavesdrop on some of their juicy Sistine Chapel secret knowledges) to snack and hydrate. Which was much needed.

Now I thought I would be able to go straight from my break spot to the chapel, but man I was very, very wrong. To get to the chapel you have to go through a series of super long halls: the painted hallway, the tapestry hall, the map hall, through the large painting rooms, the christian art exhibits, and then, and only then, can you finally see the chapel, after having walked about 100 miles shoulder to shoulder with people who are overheated, exhausted, and at the end of their rope. But hey, I guess that’s part of the Sistine Chapel experience to be fair and I was fairing fine since I took the time to cool down and power-snack.

The chapel itself was quite pretty of course and there could be plenty to say about the paintings and whatnot which I admired for the better part of a half-hour but instead I’ll talk about a few things I noticed in particular. It’s smaller than I imagined, it is a sizable chapel but I was expecting an enormous Notre-Dame cathedral covered in art but it was on the small side of chapels I’ve seen in Europe thus far. No photos were allowed and silence requested, which was enforced by a couple guards yelling at the crowd whenever they saw a flash and occasionally wading through the crowd giving angry looks. But of course they had no hope of stopping people, who mostly ignored them and were anything buy silent. I couldn’t hear myself think it was so loud practically. The back wall especially caught my eye, as it was a deep blue and very prominent against the lighter colors present throughout the chapel. I of course snuck a photo of the classic Adam pose and peaced out after taking a blurry picture of the organ which did not stand out to me in any way.

The final exhibit I saw was a curated collection of broken statues that had been or were currently in the process of being repaired. I also spotted a very nice looking Ciampi piano that was unfortunately closed, roped off and had the security guards talking right next to it, so I opted not to play. I was also in a rush since I needed to catch my train which was back across town near my hostel.

An hour of very hot power walking later (leg still hurting too ugh) I picked up my pack from Legends and sped my way over to the main Termini. But for some reason my train was located at platform 2EST which I could not find for the life of me, because it was Not platform 2 but something entirely different. By the time I finally figured out that it was located a football field away off the the side of the main station its was only a couple minutes until my train was due to depart so I had to run my ass as fast i could with my two packs down to the platform. I did make it but i was panting, overheated, and sweating up a storm. And you had better believe that train was completely packed and completely without AC. I actually stood in the in-between area between cars for the first hour just because it was slightly cooler in an attempt to return to my status as a human being instead of a melted puddle. After a while enough people got off that I could find a seat without risking death from the proximal heat of another person. I ate the rest of my Xiang Zi leftover shrimp and watched Netflix until i arrived at the Figline Valdaro station where my next host, Birgit, was picking me up. She drove me up to their home in Casa Biondo, which is up in the mountains from Figline and was introduced ourselves and chatted for the drive. She’s fluent in German, Italian, and English and we chatted about enjoying travel and life in general as she drove me up to their 500 year old house in the mountains of Tuscany. Which is gorgeous by the way: a massive stone building with an extensive garden full of fresh veggies and several chickens that Birgit promised to introduce me to later. Busy day so I fell right asleep once I was unpacked.