Date: 2008-02-19
To: Rome to Florence
Miles today: 0.0

thank you to cousin Rach for her detailed report on family matters. It was good to hear what is going on back home. Mum is good enough to write most days, but her typing skills are limited and a few lines know take her most of the afternoon. HAHA.Thanks to Mich to for his detailed report on the goings on in the gong. I am sure that the little woman will soon settle in, make some new freinds, and the netball sounds like an exciting optin. With you out fishing soon there will be no fish left in the sea. I had not heard anything about the cricket, beleive it or not it is not something that interests the Italians.Yesterday was a big day off to see ST Peters vatican city. Climbed upto to the whispering gallery, well that is what they call it at other big cathedrals. It was really scary, it is so high up and so big. Did not climb all the way to the top of the dome to enjoy the vies, was happy at the height I reached. We went donstairs and had a look around in the church, and I was stunned at the size of it. It is rediculous how big it is. If you have been reading my blog you would know how impressed I was by the one in London, well t Pauls could fit inside St Peters many times, and that is no over exaggeration. The cental naive would easily fit a football oval down the middle of it, and then it has many more thins and more grand passages off to the side. In one corner there was a Priest doing his thing, so we went and joined in, and I even received the Eucarists, not being baptised or christened did not seem to stop me. I jsut wanted to get the full experience of being in Rome. The place is decorated in frescoes, statues, marble columsns, granite columns all over the place. It is so over the top, never seen anything like it. The first pope is supposedly right in the middle, the size of the altar is beyond beleif. Everyting is just massive, it has al been supersized, that big one in Melbourne you could fit numerous times within this church, it would easily fit size ways in one of the passages off to the side of the naive. It is just one of those things you would have to see. In the afternoon it was off to see the sistine chapel. The line was over a km long, and it took more than an hour of waiting to get in. There is always a few severly deforemed people on your path, who have there club foot out o display, or a head that is shaking that has massive bumps and lumps all over it, they are a sight in themselves. From all the beggars and deformed people you see around Rome, I dont think their social welfare system or their hospitals are working all that well. It amases me that there is so much of it right out side the steps of the Vatican, maybe there is a price to pay for the opulence and wealth found within the vatican walls. If you combined everything that I had seen in London, the Vatican would still be far more impresive and have more jewels, marble, and all other stuff. it is more like a palace, or the throne of a massive empire than a place of worship. I guess as they say the Holy Roman Empire, simply did replace the Roman empire, seeing something of such gand wealth, I was talking to a catholic australian in the backpackers who said that in Australia alone they raise more than 2 million a year from collections for the upkeep of St Peters. The sistine chapel is even more amasing, it was basically the area that the Popes use to use, but before you reach it, you walk through a combination of corridors and rooms painted by the greatest renaissance artists. The rooms done by Raphael are just as spectacular. Some of the hallways seilings look like they are 3 dimensional, but it is jsut the way they have been painted. The Sistine chapel was standing room only, it was like being on Kardinia park to welcome home the premiership team. I started tking pictures and an irate italian started yelling at me. Everyone else was taking them, so I went down the other end of the room and started taking a few more, and then he was screeching at me. Eventually I stood against one of the alls and just looked up and admired the ceiling, it is certainly worth its billing. At the same time all of the other rooms are jsut as good, it took me about an hour and a half to 2 hours to make my way right through, sure did end up with a sore neck.The Vatican is more grande and wealthier than any other palace or region on earth, more spectacular than Versaile which lead to the French revolution, or the creation of the palaces at St Petersburg. There is nothing that can generate money like religion, but what is the reasoning behind such a creation. It looks unbeleivable, I walked around with my mouth agog, but does such a thing get you closer to god, well I have never been reilgious, but like most of what i am seeing it certainly was thought provoking. What is located within the Vatican walls are the grandest builidings on the planet. All you see of the Romans are the foundations and the odd column, but it is pretty clear where the Catholics got their inspiration from, if anything this building gives you an insight and an idea of what the Romans must have created 2000 years ago.