Quo Vadis? Part I

Rome.

The name itself is so majestic and I can't stop smiling every once in a while whenever I realise I was actually there. In five days we saw as much as we possibly could, and I'm pretty sure we did pretty well. Our legs ached at the end of every night, but everything was so worth it. We walked into every single cathedral and basilica that we passed, and there were many. How tremendously beautiful they all are here, I don't see how anyone could ever get used to it. I personally loved the ones that were baroque in style, like Santa Maria Magiorre. The small chapels within them. Marble, gold, the wonderful detail in ceilings built so high as to be close to the heavens. The Pantheon was awesome too. I didn't know that it had been pretty much converted into a Basilica.

I loved all that was left of the buildings and the frescoes. The tall columns and rocks and ruins, adjacent to cobblestone roads, and blending in with some more modern buildings. I always tried to imagine what it would have looked like, but it's hard and I end up having to make mental notes to look up high-tech building reconstructions on Google.

Again there was so much waiting. We waited in line for tickets to the Colosseum and the Roman forum, and for the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel we waited two hours under the sun in a queue that stretched for about three streets-long (ha so informative, my awesome measurement scale, but you do the math). It's definitely a place I have to come back to. It was a maze and in Summer, everyone is just too close together to be able to appreciate it fully, I think. The Sistine Chapel was stunning to say the least. A real neck-strainer to be able to see the details of the ceilings and I think I'll bring a mirror so I can just view the reflections next time, whilst still transposing it in my head because I'm brilliant like that. 

I trudged off again and did the Museum without Anna.. It's one of those things I think I prefer to do at my own pace. We ended up meeting at St Peter's anyway at the end of the day, with me being late and missing Mass because I overestimated my manipulative abilities of ditching the queue by convincing the guards of my holy Catholicness. Heck, even the nuns had to queue. I like Europe. There are so many lessons and exercises that I now know I'm meant to learn and put into practice here. More on that some other time. Maybe. By no means am I saying that I've learnt them, but still a while to go. A lifetime in fact, but it's good to identify them all the same, and that's what I'm doing here. Narrowing it down. I think when I actually have the nerve to read back on this blog though, it'll possible to see all the defects right off the bat.

But the rest of the Museum was really lovely and was something of an artwork in itself, and had something for everyone. Ancient Greek and Roman and Egyptian artefacts and all kinds of artworks. I loved some of the contemporary art there, especially because one dude's name was Rufino Tamayo. I'm starting to appreciate contemporary art and surrealism a lot more because it's just so, well, original and conceptualised. Like I think there might be more of a mental thinking process going on than I had initially thought, because the outcome is often hardly recognisable to the original so there's a little more room for creativity and I've just got to know what was in their mind at the time for creating the piece the way they did. I'm sort of getting into biographies as well. Short ones at the moment, because that's all I can get hold of. How do other people live their lives? What milestones would I add for mine?

Vatican City. Wooo so we went to the smallest country thing in the world. What can I say? The Swiss guards are pretty hot… Why didn't anyone tell me? Especially when they walk and their colourful costume things flutter brilliantly in the wind haha. No it was an amazing place. Amazing, extraordinary, fantastical, whimsical. I'm running out of adjectives but I'm going by the mini-note lists I made on my iPhone and writing about events that happened one week ago, and my stories seem to have a best-before date. I think it's because Myer-Briggs tells me I'm a feeler. I've always hated the label but now it's growing on me. The more I resent it, or even care, the more it shows how correct it actually is. And I'm far too proud to admit that Myer and Briggs know me better. Try and see how that point drew on from/ was relevant to the last one, because I can't.

One other day I got myself completely lost walking around the city from Piazza dell Populo when I was trying to find the Centre here (can I just stress again how hot it is here?). After missing a turn and going for 30 minutes further until spotting the statue of Jose Rizal in Via Manila (woo so patriotic), I had to turn around and redirect myself. But it was such a coincidence because when I got to the door, there were a group of Aussie girls there who'd just done the exact same mistakes as I had. Then we did the whole "wait, I actually know you" thing because we'd gone to the same high school. Small small world. The church there is actually underground, it's amazing. It was also a slightly facet of the Work that I hadn't seen before.


Rome really is a city that doesn't sleep. I loved the night times because that's different when we could have some great dinner, and afterwards people seemed to hang out at the piazzas (also a brilliant concept), sitting on the pretty nearby fountains to celebrate the setting of the sun and appreciate the coolness of the night. Speaking of fountains, the Trevi Fountain was pretty cool, if not a bit crowded. I chucked a useless penny in there (I need all the wishes I can get) and got weird looks. Turns out you should actually be wishing for love, and throwing it from behind your back. What now?