Vatican City

Vatican City


Guy:  Is this where Jesus fought the lions?
Tour Guide:  Um.......


Wow, I don't know where to start here.


So, I'll begin by saying, if you ever wonder why the restaurant your at is slow, your neighborhood store is empty, or the party your at sucks, assume all those missing people are at the Vatican Museum.  Holy shit, I've never seen so many people in a such a small space.  The Vatican Museum made a cattle drive look like a lazy stroll through the park, where prods were replaced by tour guide wands and telephoto lenses.


The camera action inside the museum was purely too much.  It got to the point where I didn't care if I walked in people's pictures anymore.  They would throw me a dirty look, and I'd respond in kind with not one, but two shrugged shoulders.  And that will lead us into another installment of WEIRD TOURIST PICS.


WEIRD TOURIST PICS:


1)  Guy trying to take picture of himself putting arm around statue......but the statue was three feet away behind glass.
2)  British kid, in sequence, takes pictures of every sculpture in an entire wing--there were probably 50-75.
3)  Gal takes pictures of the stairs she thinks lead to the Sistine Chapel, but in fact lead to the bathrooms.
4)  Girls taking turns taking sexy-butt out-kiss-face photos in front of the alter in St. Peter's 
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5)  And the Winner:  The Vatican employs Swiss guards that dress in traditional Renaissance attire (seen below).  This one guard was moving some guard rails, generally working, and he was tightly surrounded by 50 people, giggling and taking pictures.


People are weird, and tourists are their emissaries.  


So, if you ever wonder how the Pope dresses so fly in those robes, or how the Catholic church pays off all those potential legal cases, there is king's ransom coming through the gates of the Vatican Museum everyday.  I stood in a narrow hallway and estimated how many people walked by me in a three-minute span.  I counted about 300, and at 22 American dollars a ticket, that's $6,600 of nontaxable revenue.  There are four miles of exhibits in the museum.


The highlights of the museum were the Raphael Rooms, which includes his most most famous work, The School of Athens (seen below), and of course the Sistine Chapel.  The chapel is amazing, but about the size of a basketball court and temporarily housing a stadium worth of fans.  


But far and away the high point of the day was St. Peter's Basilica, which I snuck into from the Sistine Chapel, avoiding the line outside.  I'm not gonna say much about it, as my plan was to take enough photos to appropriately convey the size and scope of this monster.  There's so many people in this Vatican City, but St. Peter's seemed to have the ability to house any number.  


TIP OF THE DAY:


If it says no shorts in St Peter's and no photography in the Sistine Chapel, abide by the rules.  Don't be a dick.  


LISTENING:

ST. PETER'S BASILICA