Two Countries in Two Days

Thanks to cruel bus drivers I got lost as soon as I arrived in Rome and tried to get a bus to Kelsey's neck of the woods.  However thanks to great friends who are willing to track you down, I made it back to Kelsey's apartment without wandering around the city, lost, at night, for too long. 

Italy is country number five, and as Kelsey pointed out when she gave me and her boyfriend Nick a personal tour of the Vatican the next day, I had just entered country number six!  My count - 10 countries in 9 weeks - now has to become 11 countries, since the Vatican is technically it's own country.  So cool!  The museum has many beautiful works, as is expected, but the highlight really is the Sistine Chapel.  Kelsey told us some cool stories/facts about Michelangelo and the paintings, one of which was that when he moved the scaffolding after completing the first half of the ceiling he was disappointed in his work feeling that it wasn't powerful enough, so when he started on the second half, he made the people bigger and the scenes less busy to increase the grandeur. 

I think both halves show Michelangelo's brilliance, especially evident by the fact that he was able to paint a man to look like he is leaning away from us, while his feet are closest to us and he is placed on the curve of the ceiling!

We also visited St. Peter's, the Trevi and Four Rivers fountains, a bunch of other churches, and the Pantheon.  My first two thoughts about the Pantheon were "how the heck were they able to make that dome" and "I wish it was raining to see it come through the hole in the dome!"

Nick cooked us dinner - it a fabulous spaghetti bolognese - and then we spent the night talking and drinking wine.  I couldn't have asked for a better day!