CCXXVI - Rome, Sabato, 20 July 2019

Ah, Sabato was very painful. My hands hurt, and my hands are tough hands. Well, they've got to be tough with what they had to reckon with today, lugging that twelve kilo baggage up and down the greater part of the Vatican City. I should have known better and parked it in storage somewhere. Yes, the unfortunate thing about today was that the apartment wasn't ready until eleven am, and that was just about an effing disaster because that was right about the time I was supposed to be in the Vatican Museums. That Roman summer, too, it just about swallowed me whole. Those damned paved stones! Thank God for kind taxi drivers! They were straight with me today. Oh, Sabato was very painful. Not having planned for a local phone card, I only managed to scrounge a little bit of dirty free wifi at a blessedly generous travel agency. An effing MacDonalds didn't have wifi, for crying out loud! But, I suppose, there but for the grace of God go I.

The Vatican was wonderful, of course, once I had managed to stow my luggage away in their cloakroom. I love museums. I kinda felt that the Vatican Museum's paintings were a little underwhelming - at least in terms of the types of paintings that I generally know and love. These ones today were a little more, well not antiquated, but more renaissance style, more pre-classical. Of course, the Vatican has that whole unimpeachable city-state thing going, its lovely buildings, even some cuneiform script artifacts and Grecian dark pottery in its inventory, which I was so thrilled to see in person for the first time; and it had that wondrous gem of the Sistine Chapel. It's simply astonishing, I don't know, it's unrivaled, the whole Michelangelo thing; it's beautiful, ceiling to ceiling. The latin script of the paintings - it kills me that I can only read little parts of it. I see the word Temptatio, now a painting with Christ standing at the rooftop of a palace, and an old, cloaked man standing next to him, now gesturing towards and the ground beneath them, and it makes sense. Then another portion, the old man points at stones, feed yourself, you Christ! The Sistine Chapel - just to say those words, I feel a sense of awe, reverence, and emotion. I tell you what, though, it gets really tiring staring upwards at a ceiling.

My absolutely favourite was St. Peter's Basilica - it was grandiose; such great halls and ceilings, packed with scenes, figures, saints, angels, demons, all characters. The whole TV ES PETRVS ET SVPER HANC PETRAM, it's so lovely, what a sight. And it was not too crowded, after the whole menagerie of a crowd that was in the Vatican Musems and the Sistine Chapel - I especially liked that. Leaning against a marble wall, considering the whole of the church; yes, it would have been a nice moment to have with a friend.

I'm not going to beat around the bush here - Rome has totally amazingly beautiful women. Just stunning, beautiful women, it's unbelievable. And the men they walk with, effing hillbillies. These are some seriously smoking women.

Well, I've boiled some store-bought ravioli in tomato pasta sauce for dinner today, It was very nice, actually, if a little hastily cooked. Oh and I learnt that the italian word for eggplant is melanzana. Ah, isn't it beautiful. Well, I've got many museums to see tomorrow, and the luggage is now firmly stowed in the apartment. It's going to be a real treat.

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I spent (in EUR):

1 - train station toilet
8 - train ticket to Trastevere
12 - cab to the Vatican
21 - Vatican Musems and Sistine Chapel
11 - panini sandwich, coffee and water
28 - St Peter's Basilica, including climb to the cupola
10 - cab to Trastevere
25 - supermarket groceries
56 - apartment in Trastevere