Videos

Guess what I have?! Videos from the trip! Yay!

Now, hopefully I can figure out how to embed these correctly...here goes nothing...

Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace. You can see that we had a really great spot for this!

And now is when we said, "Oh crap! Everything else is going on inside the gates!" There were probably 5-7 rows of people between us and the gates so we had to push our way through as much as possible to see anything. Here's some not-so-great videos of that boring part.

And then, out of nowhere, another band came in from a slightly different direction. Of course by this time we had moved to get a view by the gates so we didn't have as good of a view of this group as we did at the beginning.

And then more video through the fence.

Next up...Eiffel Tower!

This guy was playing the xylophone in the Marienplatz in Munich.

And Jim's favorite video...a group playing at Piazza Navona in Rome.

I'm missing video from the Palace of Versailles, so when Jim gets around to uploading that one I will get it posted too!

Final day in Rome - Part 3

It is hard to describe St. Peter's Basilica because of its massive size. There are tombs for Popes all over the place along with statues of saints. I'll do my best to explain the photos below!

The Holy Door. This door is only opened during a Holy Year, every 25 years (the last being in 2000). It is bricked up on the inside and on the first day of a Holy Year the Pope strikes the brick wall with a silver hammer.

This might not seem unbelievable by looking at the photos, but the letters running around the church are over 6 1/2 feet high. The lower statues on that wall are 18 feet tall and the upper statues are 40 feet tall. That is MASSIVE! They varied the height so the statutes appear to be the same size from below.

Michelangelo's beautiful statue called "Pieta". This depicts the Virgin Mary cradling the dead Jesus in her lap after the crucifixion. It was vandalized with an axe in 1972 and was then placed behind protective glass.

Again---40 feet and 18 feet tall!

6 1/2 feet letters!

Tomb of Gregory XIII

Corpse of Pope John XXIII. SO WEIRD. That is his ACTUAL BODY. No lie. There are three corpse's that you can see (I have a photo of one other below). He has been dead since June 1963. They say that they don't embalm them with anything special, but I am telling you what--that is just not normal!

St. Peter's Dome

Statue of St. Peter. They say it is good luck to rub St. Peter's feet. We of course took them up on that offer! His foot is deformed from the oil that comes off of people's hands. Think about it---20,000 people go through the Basilica EVERY DAY! That's a lot of hands touching his feet!

The Altar:

The Altar:

Bernini's "Cathedra Petri" and "Gloria":

St. Veronica. She is said to have wiped Jesus' face during the Way of the Cross. The Relics of the Passion, kept here, include a scrap of material with the imprint of a bearded man brought from Jerusalem to the crusades, believed to be Veronica's veil. This is depicted in her statue.

Funny story about this tomb. This tomb was supposed to be for a pope, but the sculptor was not of Catholic faith. They allowed the sculptor to be used but told him that he could not sign his masterpiece. As the tomb was almost finished, he asked one more time to be allowed to sign it because he was very proud of the tomb. They told him no and he should be grateful he is getting paid to do it! The tomb was covered up at this time so he went back to work on it, and when it was revealed, he had used his own face as the face of the pope on the tomb! In the end, he signed it! However, they were so angry that it has never been used as a tomb---it's a broom closet!

Another corpse! Pope Pius X, he died in August 1914.

Looking across Piazza San Pietro from the Basilica:

There you have it! The final day of our trip. It was fabulous and I'll try to post a wrap-up later!

Final day in Rome - Part 2

Ok, so after we went through all of that, we finally got to go to the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately no photos are allowed anymore. The famous paintings were all grimy and dirty due to candles being used in the Chapel and a company offered to clean it up at no charge, for the rights to all photos and video of the chapel for the next 100 years. It seems like such a let down to not show photos, so I'll show some stock photos I found online just so I can include them here! We were uber excited to get to the chapel, but I must say, it was a slight letdown. I mean, this is the chapel of all chapels (especially if you're Catholic, of course we're not, but it's still such a sacred place) yet people apparently cannot follow instructions. There's no talking and no photos in the chapel. Yet everyone was talking and then the Chapel Employees would yell out NO TALKING, NO PHOTOS! Over and over and over. So annoying. So, for me, that really ruined the sacredness of the Chapel. Did I regret it? No way, still glad we got to see it, just wish people would shut up! :D

Information about the paintings

I'm going to link Wikipedia here because you can see a lot more there than I could explain but I'll try to give some info:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistine_Chapel_ceiling

The main scenes on the actual ceiling are: God separates light and dark, God creates the sun and plants, God separates water from earth, Creation of Adam, Creation of Eve, Temptation in the Garden of Eden, Noah and the ark, the great flood, and Noah drunk and disgraced.

In addition are photos of 12 prophets: Jonah, Jeremiah, Persian Sibyl, Ezekiel, Erythraean Sybil, Joel, Zechariah, Delphic Sibyl, Isaiah, Cumaean Sibyl, Daniel and Libyan Sibyl.

Ancestors of Christ are depicted between the windows.

One one wall are the Stories of Moses: Moses leaving Egypt, the trials of Moses, the crossing of the Red Sea, Descent from Mount Sinai, punishment of the rebels, and testament and death of Moses.

The other wall contains the Stories of Jesus: Baptism of Christ, Temptation of Christ, Vocation of the Apostles, Sermon of the Mount, Delivery of the Keys, and the Last Supper.

The back wall contains paintings of the Resurrection of Christ and the Disputation over Moses' body.

The front wall contains another magnificent (and enormous) painting called The Last Judgement; painted by Michelangelo. The top section shows heaven with Jesus and many Saints and Angels. The bottom section depicts hell.

A great story about this is that before the painting was completed, some Cardinals viewed the work in progress. One of them didn't like it and said there was too much nudity for a Chapel. Michelangelo took offense to that and after they left he painted that Cardinal's face on a body in the bottom right corner. This person is in hell and has a snake wrapped around its body, biting his genitals. Guess he got back at that Cardinal, huh? When the painting was revealed, the Cardinal recognized himself and complained to the Pope joked that his jurisdiction did not extend to hell and the painting would remain as-is.

One more section for St Peter's Basilica will be posted later!

Final day in Rome - Part 1

I'm going to break this up into two groups because I have a lot of photos from this day that need descriptions. :)

We booked a guided tour of the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. This tour was phenomenal and so informative. Worth every penny! It started off at the Vatican Museums. To be honest, neither of us were too knowledgeable about the museums, nor did we have any care to go through it, BUT it was the only way to see the Sistine Chapel and of course that's the highlight of Rome so no biggie.

A great view of the Sistine Chapel from the Vatican Museum Courtyard:

Courtyard:

I don't remember what this is...but it was in the courtyard also.

Vatican Museum:

Courtyard of the Pinecone. The bronze sculpture is called "Sphere Within Sphere" and close-up it's actually pretty neat.

Courtyard of the Pinecone. This bronze sculpture is from the 1st century! It was an ancient fountain.

The next few photos are from inside the Museum:

Amazing tapestries depicting the Life of Jesus (among other things as well).

This ceiling is so amazing. It is completely flat...and by that I mean everything you see in the photos are flat...not raised, not 3-dimensional at all. It looks that way, I was completely in awe. But this painter created the 3-D look using shadows only. WOW!

Tapestry of the Resurrection:

Ceiling in the Map Room:

Raphael's School of Athens in the Raphael Room: