Rome if You Want To

Yesterday was crazy! We had to make our reservations to get a train from Florence to Paris (we are bypassing the Swiss, don't tell them). In order to get the night train we wanted, we have to leave from Florence to Milan on Wednesday night and switch to a sleeper again in Milan that will take us into Paris. We are hoping for no strangers again in our berth, but who gets that lucky twice? That decision about leaving Florence Wednesday meant we had to go to Rome yesterday and we had to make it count since we just had one day. We hopped on a train and went for it. We hit the biggies, The Colosseum and The Sistine Chapel. We saw the Roman Forum from a distance and a lot of other things really quickly in passing. We went to the Colosseum first, because I knew I could find that easier on the subway. We did the audio tour with the fast stops and then we had less than an hour to make it to the Vatican before the ticket counter closed at 4:00. We made it with five minutes to spare. The Vatican museum is cool, but really, really extensive even if we weren't stopping at every single room. We hit a couple of the more impressive (recognizable) paintings and wound our way to the Sistine Chapel. Literally, they wind you through about five stories and 50 rooms on the way to the chapel. It really is AWESOME! I was dizzy after about 30 seconds of tipping my head back to look at it, (and I assume they frown on nausea in the chapel even though it's not on the signs) I can't believe Michelangelo actually stood on scaffolding for years painting one section at a time with his head tipped back. Because the paint is actually painted onto wet stucco to make it permanent, his assistants only put up the cement mixture one small square at a time. It was only as much as he could paint in a single day. If something was wrong, the stucco had to be scraped away so he could do it again. We stayed there for a long time looking at all the panels on the roof and comparing them to the Day of Judgement painting he did on the wall by the altar many years later, when he saw Christianity through a more jaded lens than he'd had when he did the ceiling. Thanks to Rick Steves of PBS fame we had our own tour guide with commentary and bad jokes on the podcasts had loaded on her phone. I wish we'd had more time in Rome, there really are some great architectural things we totally had to skip in order to make our train back to Florence. Now that I have done a trip like this on my own, there are lots of things I'll do different the next time I act as a tour guide to Europe. I would definitely brush up on my Roman history a lot better. But, I think it has gone really smoothly so far. Who's ready to join me?