Day 1 was reserved for the
Vatican, except that there really is no winning against the long tourist lines
if you don’t have a reservation. If you just want to take a selfie at St. Peter’s
Square, then you’ll be done in less than half an hour. If you want a more eventful
Vatican excursion, then you are better off booking your reservation online. I
arrived on a Thursday and still managed to get slots for the Vatican Museum for
the next day. It all depends on the season. I also suppose that weekends are
way busier.
Considered as the smallest state in the world, the Vatican is barely a square kilometer big. The inhabitants are said to number around a thousand, although that figure doubles during working hours when its staff members who live outside its walls come in for work. It lies conveniently close to Old Rome, and sometimes you can’t even clearly delineate where the Vatican ends and Rome begins. Most people just don’t give a shit and combine both in one itinerary. After all, not everyone is as OC as I am.
We did pass by the Vatican on
my first day. What happened is we just shied away from the museum because of
the long queues. Finding a parking space close to the Vatican’s walls is a real
pain, which is why I suggest that you just get there via public transportation.
You have two or three stops of Rome’s Metropolitano to consider depending on
your main destination within the walls. As for us, we went straight
to St. Peter’s Square when we found a parking space after five years of
searching for one.
St. Peter’s Square was smaller
than I imagined, but then again my basis for it has always been the films that
I’ve seen. Of course, everything always seem bigger onscreen. At the middle is an
obelisk, which I think was imported from Egypt or something. The dome is the main
attraction, ever omnipresent wherever you go. The next thing you’ll notice is the
long line going into the basilica. Rumor has it that you can skip it if you pay
the fixers outside who persistently coax you into purchasing a tour package. We
opted not to.
After the selfies and photos
were done, we went ahead and followed the road leading to Castel Sant’Angelo,
fluidly transitioning to Old Rome for that day’s itinerary. When we got back
home, my friend checked the schedule for the museum the next day and we
immediately booked two tickets for the 13:30 time slot. Just Google Vatican
Museums and it will lead you straight to its website. You can pay the ticket
with a credit card. Print the voucher and exchange it for an actual ticket on
the day of your trip.
You can skip the kilometric
line outside with that printed voucher. Go straight to the entrance around 10
minutes before your intended time slot. You will see a separate line for group
tours and online bookings, and both are usually empty. Wave at the poor sinners
falling in line outside as you make your way to the door. You totally outwitted
them today. Security upon entry is similar to that of an airport, so expect
x-rays and trays, except that there are no restrictions with liquids this time
around. After that, you’re in!
Go to the counter and get your
ticket. It is important to exchange your voucher for an actual ticket because
you will scan that ticket’s barcode on the turnstile once you get upstairs. If
you don’t, the security personnel will ask you to go back down to get the
ticket. Don’t say I didn’t warn you! After one more escalator ride, you’ll
finally reach the stairs going up to the museum proper. You have a choice: left
or right? Turn left for the complete experience, and then choose if you want
the long or short itinerary.
The short itinerary includes
the mini Egyptian museum. The long one DOESN’T, which means you will have to
get back there to take the short route if you want to see mummies. We opted for
the long route first, which leads you to a garden of sorts with a giant golden
globe in the middle. I don’t know what it symbolizes. It looks downright apocalyptic
to me, and defo post-modern. There is a café next to it if ever you feel like
drinking an overpriced cappuccino. You drank a cappuccino at the Vatican. You’re
so cool.
The first hall you enter has a
good collection of busts and full body sculptures from Rome’s glory days. If
you are a big fan of the classics, then this is YOUR hall. It’s also a good
opportunity for you to practice your rusty Latin reading the inscriptions on
those sculptures. The hall is neither too long nor too short. It won’t take you
an hour to see everything, unless you are big on details because you are a fan.
After that, head to the stairs which has awesome ceiling paintings of
philosophers on it. It will lead you to more sculptures.
This is the start of neck
torture for you. As the ceilings are painted in intricate detail, you will be
spending most of your time looking up. Perhaps you should come prepared with a
neck brace. By all means, make a fashion statement! You’ll see more nude
sculptures from Roman mythology, as well as some ancient bath tubs large enough
to host an orgy in honor of Bacchus. What? These ancient Romans loved taking a
bath. After looking up and down and up and down and up again for photos, I just
gave up.
Yeah, those artsy ceilings
never end. It takes a man of great patience and a smartphone with a good memory
card to keep up. One thing you realize about all this luxury is how effing rich
the Catholic Church actually is. Paintings. Sculptures. Tapestries. Name it,
the Vatican Museums have it. If you love art that much, then I suggest spending
the entire day here. After all, the ticket you get has no time limit. Just make
sure that you get there early to beat the crowd. Perhaps, you can get an actual
selfie that’s worth it.
Admission to the Sistine
Chapel is included in the entrance fee, but I don’t think you’ll enjoy it
because as I predicted, it felt like an evacuation center. Taking either photo
or video is NOT allowed inside but since there are, like, five guards for five
million people cramped inside that chapel, it’s actually easy to snap an
illegal selfie. In fact, you can see ours in this blog entry somewhere. No, we didn’t
go to jail. No one even noticed. You’ll even see tourists blatantly pointing
their cameras at the ceiling. Bad tourists! Bad!
But that doesn’t mean that the
guards do not yell. A lot of them do, and some of them are standing on an
elevated stage, as if that will help them catch desperate camwhores. We stayed
for around 10 minutes inside before calling it quits. Don’t get me wrong, the ceilings
are awesome. Some of the paintings even look like they are in 3D, as in they
seem like they’re popping up from the ceiling itself. But the ambiance, bruh.
It’s not for the faint of heart. After we’re done, we went back to the Egyptian
museum.
The collection at the Egyptian
museum was not that big, but I enjoyed it somehow because I’m currently taking
an online course on Egyptology. It is indeed different when you are looking at
them on your laptop as opposed to seeing them for real right in front of you. Our
Vatican trip ended at the spiral staircase, which was an awesome conclusion in
the form of a visually appealing downward spiral. That’s Instagram material
right there. Just be careful running down, it’s kind of slippery!
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