Saturday 2 June Vatican City

How to describe our day at the Vatican? Yes, absolutely, this place holds the treasures of the world, but there are couple of other things to keep in mind if you want to go there. Firstly, everybody, but everybody, else wants to go there too, and a large chunk of them are there on the same day that you are. Secondly, the guards that work there are tasked with caring for some of the greatest treasures in the world - combine that with a sense of burning self-righteousness and you get some very uptight and angry men.

The queue outside was very, very, very long. Fortunately, as a guided group, we skipped that and walked straight in. As we walked in, one of the Vatican guards was shouting at a scared looking middle-aged American man in the general public queue. Really shouting at him, in his face, for a good long time. I asked Laurence what the guard was saying (it was all in Italian of course), and he said that the man had muttered something to his friend as the guard went past, and the guard took offence and thought the man was complaining about the queue - he was shouting ‘You think it is my fault, huh? What do you want me to do about it?’ etc etc. Petty and unnecessary, really.

The Vatican museums are extensive, and chocker full of interesting and unique things to look at, but we only had a couple of hours here, so we joined the shuffle to get to the Sistine Chapel, and shuffled for around 20 minutes through a series of fabulous corridors lined with the most amazing artworks and treasures from all over the world. The map room was particularly fascinating. The final shuffle takes you down some very unremarkable concrete stairs, and then there is a sudden left turn, up two steps and there you are. So are a thousand or two other people. Guards patrol incessantly, alternating their cries from ‘Silenzio’ to ‘No photos’ and back again. The press of the crowds is almost overwhelming, and then you look up and around. We managed to find ourselves a seat on one side (after being told off by the guards for standing still, and then for trying to sit on some steps ‘No sitting there! Move on’), and we just sat and looked at the pictures. And they really are stunning. Michelangelo is truly a genius, and this artwork is outstanding. He poured seven years of his life into this chapel, as an old man, and nearly blinded himself in the process through toxic paint dripping into his eyes as he lay on his back in the scaffolding painting the ceiling. The ceiling is full of iconic images, and the Last Judgement on the back wall is simply stupendous. Laurence had told us some interesting things to look for, so we spotted them (the only self-portrait Michelangelo ever did, the portrait he did of a hated courtier, complete with donkey ears as he is swept off to hell). Nobody ever mentions the beautiful blue of the background though. Lovely.

Next stop St Peters. Another place that is extremely hard to describe. St Marks in Venice was simply awesome in its size and the scale of its interior space, but I think you could probably fit at least two, maybe three of St Marks into St Peters. It is indefinably massive. On the floor, as you progress further and further into the interior there are a series of gold stars, each marked with the name of another iconic cathedral, to show how far that cathedral would come if it were placed inside St Peters. It made them seem tiny, until you thought about the sheer scale of this place - the height, the width are all just over the top huge. There are 40 separate altars, and many, many statues, paintings, mosaics. We were in there for an hour or so and only just beginning to see what was there. This is where the Catholic church displays its abundant, huge wealth to the world, and wow, it is impressive.  

One more experience for the day, and that was our bus trip from Rome south through Naples to Sorrento. This passed uneventfully, and we reached Naples around 8pm or so. Everyone I talked to about this trip who had been to Italy looked a bit worried when I mentioned Naples, and they all had horror stories of muggings, bag snatchings etc, so I was interested to see what it was like. We drove in just on dusk, and it looked just horrendous. Mile after mile of shabby apartment blocks and all full of endless rubbish, piles of it beside every road, stacked high everywhere. I asked Laurence about this, and he told me that there was a rubbish collectors strike here last year that lasted four months, until the city was drowning in its own festering refuse. The rat population exploded, and disease was ramping up, so in the end the government sent the army in and got things going again, but they still have not really caught up. We then got caught in an endless traffic jam as we drove out along the Sorrentine Peninsula, including about 45 minutes crawling and stopping through an endless tunnel under a headland. There were a couple of laybys in that tunnel, and honestly they were like catching glimpses into the gates of hell. I totally expected to see dead bodies lying in there among the rotting piles of revoltingness. (Maybe I have just been looking at too many of these christian frescoes!!)  I have never been so pleased to see the light of day again. One more tunnel and we were into Sorrento itself, and the tone changed completely. Back into tourist haven again, clean, lemon groves everywhere, beaches, thank goodness.  Dinner at 10pm, and then fell into bed, shattered once more at the end of another busy busy day.

Part of the Vatican Museums queue - this is about two blocks from the entrance

Security check hall, Vatican City

Shuffling queues, Vatican Museums

Map rooms, Vatican

Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo's only self-portrait - must have been having a bit of a bad day

St Peters, from about halfway down