D6 Jesus was a cross maker

12/18 Sunny all day
Rome, Vaticano

Blinding me his song remains reminding me, he's a bandit and a heartbreaker. Oh but Jesus was a crossmaker.

Today is the day that I close to the god. I have no specific religion, mainly Taoism with my family, but sometimes I’d like to church for praying, but wouldn’t believe any words of the holy Bible. That’s my personal oopinion. Still, I believe that people need to have faith. And sometimes holding a faith can create many beautiful things in the world, like the cathedral, the gospel music or amaing paintings. Most my European friends believe in specific religion, either Catholic or protestants, but people in Asia, especially among youth, we are not that active in religious activities nor do we belongs to any communion. I’d rather all the almighty gods, the Allah, the Jesus or buddha were coming from the other planet, so that they would got the power to rebirth or foreseeing.

We went to Vatican today and spent most of time in Vatican museum and Basilica di San Pietro. The distance between me and god were close.

Basilica di San Pietro

The Vantican museum has a huge collection of Christian relic, usually for a serious visitor, 6 hours might not be enough for the whole museum. There are so many world-heritage treasure on display.

Mummy

I booked an audio guide with me and spent about 2 hours visiting the museum. The first collection exhibition was Egyptian relics, I didn’t know how the ancient Egyptian connected to modern Christianity but after the explanation, I got a little clue.

Balls covered with leaf

Since I wasn’t 100% interested in knowing everything about Christianity, I had my own fun in visiting the museum. I found most of the ancient Roman sculptures were naked, but sometimes they tried to make it up with leaves. The photo up there was an example of how they tried to cover the balls with a small maple leaf. It’s so funny that the artist would even make puberty hair but cover the genitalia/penis.

Beard

Modern days we will take people with beard as non-professional or imformal. But for ancient guys, YOU MUST HAVE BEARD to show yuorself. I’ve never have beard in my life, nor did I use shavers, so that it’s hard to imagine how will I look like if I got beard. I bet that would be sexy.

Muscline

Almost all the people worked out very often so that they wouldn’t have bellies or too much fat on the body. They got abs, biceps and strong pectorals. It seems they spent most of the time exercising or training in the gym.

Upset faces

I don’t know that why their lives were so tough, the frown and felt sad about everything, just like one of the smurfs. Not only in the sculpture but the characters in the paintings were not happy for ages.

Drawings on the ceiling

They tried to decorate every walls or ceilings with mythical stories. Those are the expression of the love to god, but sometimes annoying. Imagine living in a room with dozens of people with vivid expression , they looked at you when you’re reading, eating, taking a damp or something. That’s weird!

The most famous thing in the museum is the Last Judgement in Sistine Chapel. Many people came here just for the famous painting.

The Last Judgment is a fresco by Michelangelo on the altar wall of the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City. It took four years to complete and was executed from 1537 to 1541. Michelangelo began working on it three decades after having finished the ceiling of the chapel.

Last Judgement

But to me, the Creation of Adam was moving. Having an iconic standing equalled only by Leonardo da Vinci's Mona Lisa, the hands of God and Adam being reproduced in countless imitations.

Creation of Adam

I am glad that I came here to see the painting with bare eyes. I witnessed the marvelous religious creation of the love of god. I felt joyful.

St. Peter’s Basilica

The next destination was St. Peter’s Basilica, the other world-famous site. The official administration ask every visitor go through the X-ray machine and bag check. They said that coz Vantican is a different “country” :p

Inside temple of St. Peter’s

There were many tourists in the building and every’s taking photos of everything. So did I, the problem is that I didn’t know any stories behind them, for example the magnificent sculptures, if you didn’t know the background story of how the artist made and why they made those sculptures, those things would be something good but meaning nothing.

Roof!

So that I decided to climb to the top of the building, I’ve heard that there will be panoramic views of Rome city, really looking forward to it! To climb the stairs, 5E fee is obligatory and you have to climb almost 400 stairways to the top. That’s exhausted but totally worthy.

Photos from the top

That’s the end of the day and we went to Florence for the next stop. Rome is a nice city to visit tho I spent most of the time doing tourist things, but still, I can feel the city’s old but energetic.

I asked Pier why you just got 2 lines of metro? He answered that the government would like to construct more public transporation, but there are so so many ancient sites in the city so that they gotta dig deeper and deeper so that wouldn’t ruin the base of the sites.

D5 Prima neve (First snow)

12 /16 Snowy, Rainy, Hailstone, Cats and dogs
Rome

Ancient ruins are basically the same, grass, engraved marble and rugged brick.  You gotta use imagination to portray what Romans used to do: okay, that square holes were toilets for senior statemen, the 3 pillars braced the whole temple in two thousand years ago. That’s the price we have to pay, since we skip the audio guide and decided to guide our own.

…xxx Temple

We needed to finish our Ancient Rome tour today, so that we went to the Roman forum and the Palatine hill this morning. There are many ruins around the forum, including famous temples and city halls back in Roman period. It is amazing that construction last more than two thousand years appear underneath our eyes still.

I don’t know how they preserve those rocks or sculptures, maybe the weather is more stable in Medeterranean region or the German had sign a contract of not-to-destroy-Rome, anyhow, it’s quite impressive to witness the greatness of human culture.

Pictures of ruins

We’re tourists, so we did totally what the tourists do. Taking pictures at almost any sights, stand in the front of spots with meaningless gestures like victory sign, or surf the guide book for further information of rocks by the road.

Tourists triplet

There were 3 girls in a row, one was tour guide for introducing ruins and its history (Pony, lady with purple bag); photographer Catherine, travelled around with her Canon 550D with a giant lens, taking amazing photos. The rest of the girls, Rani, freezing outside, being a model with the same smile in pictures.

Do as the tourists do

The temperature was minus 2 degree and we were freezing outside. I wonder how ancient Romans survived from this kind of weather? They wore scadals, silk clothes with fur or armors, that’s what we seen on TV, but during the freezing winter time, how do they make it to survive? No wonder the average age of Romans were about 35 to 40 years old. Or the world had not been destroyed like today, so that the temperature were still stable and warm in the past.

Basic equippment: Knit hat, scarf, heat preservation underwar, gloves and coat.

It was too cold so that we need to find somewhere with heater to rest. Then walked to the nearby Piazza Venezia, the Venice Plaza. There’s a museum with Italien modern history free to public. We hoped they got heater and toilets.

Flowers with frozen dewdrop

The traffic in Rome is adventurous for pedestrains, especially foreign ones. They’ve got crosswalk on the ground but without any single traffic light. So that if you were trying to go across the road, just went for it and the cars MUST yeild for you in best situation. But sometines there would be a race between cars and people walking on foot, competing who’s the fatest one to pass the road. :/

Roads with cars and motorcycles

I missed my motorcycle in Taiwan, and would Iike to see around Rome by riding one. The best thing about motorcycle are its convenience, easily to park, close to the scene and felt the wind blowing through. It’s dangerous when you kept attention on the scenery beside and didn’t notice the traffic.

Go soilders!

The museum displayed modern history of Italy, but most of the instruction are written in Italien, so that we just took a break and enjoy the heater for a while, then heading for the next spot, the Pantheon.

Pantheon and the fountain

We experienced the first snow at Rome, and it was the first snow in 10 years. No wonder the temperature was soooooo cold. Many tourists were happy because the snow made the city more beautiful. The Pantheon were built in 126 AD, and well-preserved until now. There’s a big hole on the top of the roof and we saw snow flake fell down on the ground, not that many but made the scenery fairily. But to be honest, without an audio guide, that place was like a big tomb and cold inside out, thanks to the hole at the roof.

And our guide book recommend a traditional ice cream shop next to the Pantheon, so we went there to grab some dessert.

Different flavor of ice cream

Even if it’s cold, having ice cream was still a must do in Rome.

Roman soldiers for sale

We went to the Piazza del Popolo and Piazza Navona to finish the day of visiting. We walked through almost the Rome city center in the afternoon, which was exhausted. So that the next destination was hotel for taking a nap.

Flora came to us in the afternoon, and she invited her friend, an Roman local for dinner. Pier is a cool guy, he worked in IBM for 10 years and spoke flent English. Flora met his best friend in Taiwan (who is the ex-boyfriend of one of her friends)

We liked to try some Italien food, since the first time we had pizza was a disaster. They served microwaved pizza for us.

Pier and us

I had the best pasta I ever had in my life, and the pizza were amazingly delicious! Let alone the food, Pier was funny, we talked about mafia, sex attitude in Italy, the discussion was relaxing and easy-going. That was the last night in Rome, we were lucky.

D4 Rome, fa freddo fuori, Baby!

12/16 Sunny with under-estimated chilly wind
Rome

Baby, fa freddo fuori!  In our mind, Italy means warm, stable mediterranean weather in the winter. We were happy that we finally came to the Mediterranean region and the weather must be warmer, just like Taiwan. We arrived Rome at 11am, the sun was shinny and gave us a big smile in comparison of the cold rain in Paris. The temperature today was +2 degree, and it’s cold, really cold. About our imagination, were absolutely wrong.

However, Rome is a dream city for many girls thanks to the famous movie by Audrey Hepburn. To Asians, stereotype of Italy is a passionate, warm country with many gangsters, motorlysts and heart-breakers. The first impression of the country is a fierce Mafia threatened the peaceful city except for one person, his mother. I asked my Italien friends, they only admit the weather part.

Random picture of Rome

We decided to visit the most important sight of Rome on the first day of visiting. The Colosseum, or the big rounded theater located in the southern parto of the city. We were amazed by the giantic scale of the building, it used to contained over 40 thousand of people at the same time.

Colosseum

The ticket cost us 16.5E for entrance and audio guide, we took Mandarin version of course. The guide asked us follow 6 spots of particular place and listen to the explanation. But I couldn’t find where are the spots and got lost in the building. It was okay because the colosseum is rounded so that I could anything from anywhere, plus occassionally imagine myself.

Different views of Colosseum

I saw a cross in the middle of the platform, the guide explained that the last Roman emporer started to believe in Christianity so that he stopped the severe beast-fighting or gladiator-fighting.

Cross

We met the other Taiwanese girl at the last moment. Her name is Catherine, also came from France and she’s studying her master in Paris. We spent the rest of the day together.

4 Taiwanese

Our next sight is the famous Fontana di Trevi, the wishing pool. The traditional way to make a wish, holding 2 coins in both of your hands, then think about your dream or wish in simple English, the Italien god wouldn’t understand british accent, and throw the coin in your right hand thtough the left shoulder.

I wished all my relatives keep safe and sound.

The night in Rome was even colder, we walked almost the whole city then find a place to rest. There’s some special Happy Hour promotion of Italien restaurant: Order a cocktail or wine for 9E and you can have buffet with sandwiches or appetitzer.

Buffet

We went back to our lovely hotel next to the train station. Surfing the Internet or uploading photos. Great night, waiting for adventure of tomorrow.