For You, Dad

I've been asked to elaborate a bit on my time in Italy and since things are tranquil here in Schull, I can certainly do that.

I could recognize Florence's skyline, even before seeing it, because of Brunelleschi's dome on the Duomo:

 

But it didn't prepare me for viewing the Duomo from the ground.  It is massive and as it's surrounded by other buildings you can never get a full view of it.  The exterior is entirely decorated with white, green, and pink marble, which I found really impressive every time I passed it.

I studied up on Michelangelo a bit since he's a superstar in Renaissance history and Florence was his home.  I saw David and other sculptures and had podcasts to give me context.  Michelangelo, at 26, sculpted the original David out of a "flawed" chunk of marble rejected by other sculptors.  And if you've ever thought that David's head is slightly too large, that's intentional: he was commissioned to stand on top of the Duomo so Michelangelo created him to look proportional from the street.  There are your two hsitory tidbits for the day.

Michelangelo was also a common thread from Florence to Rome- there I saw Moses (in the same church as the chains which are said to have bound Peter) and I capped it off with the Sistine Chapel.  In the Vatican Museum all visitors flow in the same direction and at times we felt like cattle getting slowly herded into a corral.  "Thank goodness we're not here in July," we repeated.  Not only would summer see three times as many tourists, but it would be sweltering!  Even in May, I was in a sundress and sunhat... I always envisioned Rome as hot and dusty, though.. the Romans having to wash the dust off their sandaled feet...  Anyway, the Sistine Chapel:  thankfully I had a podcast explaining it because Michelangelo's ceiling is overwhelming.  Thirty minutes looking up and listening and some order was wrought out of the initial chaos. There was also The Last Judgment frescoe.  Epic.

That was the most we saw of the Vatican.  The Pope didn't grace us with his presence although pictures of him holding a baby were everywhere: signs for his beatification (apparently he's one miracle away from becoming a saint). We went to St. Peter's Square, but didn't go inside the Basilica because it would probably look like just another cathedral, plus we didn't want to wait in this line: