Rome Day 2: Museums, Castles, and Sunsets

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Finally, we arrive at day two! We started off bright and early...extremely early for my taste, and headed back to The Vatican to visit the museums! Since it was first thing in the morning and we pre-purchased our tickets, there was no wait getting in.

It also happened to be another absolutely gorgeous day!

As expected, the museum was filled with many different sculptures. My particular favorite was this one that appeared to be of a pine cone...

Yea I have no idea what is going on there. There was also one underneath it that was another ~~stolen~~ statue from Egypt

Inside, there was the expected hundreds of statues from ancient Rome.

The above one is of the goddess Diana....better known by her Greek name, Artemis.

I had to stand there for 10 minutes waiting to take a picture of this dog statue because some annoying couple was posing and taking pictures with it. It is only right that I share it with you.

There were also some...odd things scattered about if you managed to spot them.

This one was a funny one. It's description said that the man was raising his arm in defense, but to me it clearly shows him stabbing himself in the head.

This painting cannot be described any other way than as "Man carries zombie Santa away from fire".

The building that is now the museum used to be the apartments of the Pope, so many of the art pieces were actually finely decorated walls and old chapels that used to be used by the Pope.

What is also located in the Vatican Museum is the world famous Sistine Chapel, painted by the bitter man that was Michelangelo. Obviously they had a strict "no photos" rule inside the chapel, which employees wandered through the crowd enforcing. I mean, I was pretty okay with this, if you want to know what the Sistine Chapel looks like you can Google it.

Being in it, however, is not really something that could be captured in a photograph anyway. It hurt. It hurt your neck looking up at the ceiling, it hurt your back from standing funny, and it hurt your eyes from the sheer magnitude of it. I actually got a headache trying to take everything in. It was also really funny looking around at the crowd at everyone staring straight up into the ceiling.

Overall I found it impressive, but not earth shattering. I appreciate how difficult it was to paint the chapel, but I can't say I find Michelangelo's painting skills particularly impressive. For all that studying of the human form that makes his sculptures so amazing, he seems to have completely ignored them when it comes to his paintings. Bulky, over muscled, and awkwardly proportioned sums up his painting style. And I am also convinced this man never saw a naked woman in his entire life, because he did not paint a single one that was not a man's body with two tiny, lumpy, and unrealistic boobs stuck on the front.

Sorry, my rant about how I don't really like Michelangelo is over. I promise.

There was a lot of other things in the museum, but it is impossible to say them all. Somehow we managed to completely miss the Ancient Egyptian room. That was a bit disappointing.

After we finished with the museum we went to the Vatican post office to mail a post card to our families! Every since moving to England, I have collected postcards, and I easily bought over 20 on this trip. A few got sent from an Italian post office, but only one from The Vatican (You're welcome Mom and Dad).

After that we headed off to Hadrian's Mausoleum/ Castel Sant' Angelo.

Why does this have two names, you ask? Well it was originally built from 130-139 AD by Hadrian himself to be his tomb. It housed his ashes along with the ashes of his wife and his adopted son. That big circular base is the original tomb, with that building on top being built later. It used to be covered in bronze.

In 401 AD it was converted into a fortress to protect the city. In 410, Rome was sacked and the fortress was looted, destroying the urns that contained the Emperor's ashes and of all others who had been buried there.

A bit later, in 590, Rome was being struck by a plague. The story goes that Pope Gregory the first saw the Archangel Michael standing atop the fortress proclaiming that the plague was over, and that the fortress was renamed in honor of that event.
In the 14th century it was converted into a castle for the Popes to live in. They had it connected to St. Peters by a covered and fortified road so that the Pope could walk to the Vatican without having to go outside and interact with the common folk. Typical.
Going inside the home of the former popes I have it say it was...weird. Many of the paintings on the wall were EXTREMELY sexual, and one Pope had a very sexy Greek myth painted on the walls of his bedroom. Make of that what you will.

Other than that oddity, it was a pretty amazing place.

We also encountered another seagull. Andrea decided to squawk at it, and this thing turned around and started to hop towards her! It was a terrifying moment. We thought she was going to be murdered by a seagull.

After you get past the creepy bird, the views of Rome you got where also amazing.

After that we headed across the city (at least it felt that way, I actually have no idea where it was in relation to where we were) to a city park: Villa Borghese. It is the largest gardens built in Rome since antiquity. It was built in 1605, this time by the nephew of a Pope.

On the way there we walked through a plaza where some sort of rally was going on. There was also a Michael Jackson impersonator performing...which was odd. However what held my, and Andrea's, attention was THE BUBBLES.

This man was making massive bubbles that flew all over the square. They were pretty awesome and Andrea and I acting like complete children swatting at them. :D

From the plaza we had to walk up a million stairs that nearly killed me in order to get to the park. Once we got up there though, it was stunning.

We came across this fun garden, which had a statue of a woman peaking out from it.

There was also what became my favorite statue of the entire trip, a soldier saying goodbye to his wife. It was beautiful and touching...and obviously not from antiquity. Ancient Romans would never sculpt something so sentimental.

~~Unfortunately~~ we also stumbled across the most romantic place I have ever seen in my life.

This place was disgusting it was so perfect. There were couples in row boats out on the pond, statues of women pouring jugs of water creating the perfect ambiance, swans and ducks swimming gracefully through the water, and the lighting was just right as the sun set. There was someone playing music in the distance. It really made me want to strangle myself. I could only stand there watching for so long before I had to just walk away.

Oh we also saw wild parrots! Which I thought was pretty cool. I could not get a photo though, the suckers flew too fast!

Anyways we headed back out to where we had come in to watch the sun set over Rome. We were there for about 45 minutes watching, and it was absolutely stunning. Pictures cannot possibly describe.

All in all it was a busy and exciting day! We covered even more of the city and did so many amazing things! The sunset was the perfect way to end the day.

See you next time for day three!