Looks like I’ve outrun the dank weather that has chased me across the continent. Roma was a postcard as I hit the street. It.s also undergoing renovation. The Trevi fountain is waterless and covered up for restoration. I tossed in some coins anyway. Continued wandering and cane to the part of town where the Pantheon and other really ancient sites reside. That was quite something. I asked myself, “Gee Miguel, do you think the Colosseum might be around here?” Then I looked down the block and saw some very familiar looking arches. I strolled down and sure enough. It is quite a sight. That stadium was in continual use for three centuries. We can’t keep a Modern stadium going for more than a few decades.

All this wandering in the morning was just a prelude to the days big event. The night before I had got tickets online to see the Vatican Museums and then Sistine Chapel. Oh man the Vatican. It’s actually pretty easy to get to. Just take the metro and follow the crowds. This was more than a crowd though. Call it a throng! People streaming down the street toward St. Peter’s square,motor organizes fighting for good spots along the way and then working to snag someone to get on their tour, they looked like under fed bears hoping to grab a salmon swimming upstream. Their pitch was simple “skip all lines”. An interesting and impossible promise because the sheer volume of humanity pouring into that place means that there will be lines for everything. Well buying a ticket online is mosdef the way to go. My ticket was for noon. I hopped a metro from the Colosseum and got to the Vatican early. Wanders around St Peters square a bit. Kept looking up at at familiar window where thenPope appears, wondering if the big guy would just poke his head out. By the way, pope Francis is a Superstar in Italy. He isms big seller at every souvenir stand, and his image shows up in taxi cabs, fruit stands, snack bars. Everyone loves this guy, and rightly so.

After wandering the square and looking in awe at the long, long, long line of people patiently waiting to enter the basilica I figured I better start moseying over to the Museums and begin the process of getting in. Followed the throng, all the while fending off tour organizers, and got to where the lines start, one for prepaid tix, one for everyone else. It was a bottleneck, there were tour folks everywhere.

“Are you interested in seeing everything today?”
“Would you like to skip all lines?”
“how far did you come to be here?”

I pulled out my iPad, called up the PDF of my ticket voucher and held it up as K walked. The tour organizers quailed before me like hissing vampires shown a a crucifix. I breezed past the gauntlet and into the briskly moving line for pre paid tickets. In two minutes I was in the door, the guard having scanned the code in my iPad (thank you Apple). I then breezed up to the ticket window and another scan garnered me my ticket and an audio guide voucher. A brief wait as my bag was x-rayed and my body checked for metal, and then I put my ticket into a slot in a turnstile, just like in metro stations around the world, and Presto. I was In the Vatican Museum. Took my Voucher to the audio guide desk and the very nice guy there gave me a little radio attached to a blue lanyard and a map. I offered him my drivers license as I had had to do at the Louvre and at the Van Gogh museum but he just smiled,

“No need sir, we trust you”

Talk about walking the walk!

Now comes the sticky part. The place is wall to wall people. Forget about skipping lines, when you are in the galleries you are in a long, wide, thick Lind of people all shuffling forward. A slow moving river of humanity clutching digital cameras and with audio guide devices around their necks, and trying to snatch glimpses at the little information cards posted by exhibits. The Vatican collection is vast and eclectic, and would take days to take all in. I gave up on the audio guide and just shuffled with the crowd soaking up the beauty.

The crowd got thicker, there was a bottleneck ahead, soon we were funneled from 6 abreast to 2, and down some stairs and through a twisting hallway that opened into the Sistine Chapel.

I looked up and every image on that ceiling was familiar. This was another instance of coming face to face with something that had been in my consciousness all my life. It did not disappoint. I broke out my audio guide and dialed up the Sistine Chapel recordings. The ushers in the chapel tried to usher me into the line of people who were just passing through but I dived into the stationary crowd, mostly tour groups, and gawked along with them as the tour voice, still not as sexy as in the Louvre, talked about what we were gawking at. All I can really say that would not be boring or glib, is that even after all these centuries, the artists passion is still overflowing from the work. I’ll remember the Sistine for a long time, an so to will the millions of other people who have seen it.

Having seen the Sistine Chapel, I felt ready to get free of the throng. I started to try to get out. Well, the Vatican museums are a well run institution, and yeah they were cool about the audio guides, but when it comes time to go, whether you are of the faithful or the fallen, a tourist, priest or pagan, you will exit through the gift shops! Just before entering the gauntlet of gift shops, I dutifully placed np my lightly used audio guide device in the return slot.

Back on the street I was breathing easy. I got clear of the crowd and found a little Gelato stand. Queued up behind a rather stooped older fellow who was trying to juggle several cups of gelato and pay for them. I waited patiently when he turned around. He had such a befuddled look on his face. I knew his confusion was because of a great ordeal he had just endured. How did I know? Hanging on a Blue lanyard around his neck, was a Vatican audio guide device.