Day 2: Basilica and other fun stories (but first, a discourse on tourists......actually, mostly just the discourse on tourists....actually, this probably won't be much of a travel blog at all.....I mean, this really isn't intended to be informative so much as just to let my parents know I'm still alive......)(Editor’s Note: The original text of this post has been altered in accordance with the Final Project Prerequisites as put forth by The Graham School, any blandness in content is purely the result of the author's inherent inability to write about the things he's actually required to write about. Apologies-Gabe)

So today, we went to the Vatican. Now, a lot of people believe that the pope, nuns, monks, and Swiss marine death squads populate the worlds smallest country. This is actually a fact (true or not) that I'd like to dispute. It is my experience that The Vatican is populated by thousands of ancient and priceless statues and crotchety and worthless tourists.

......

 A brutal assessment, I'm aware, however, after watching the parasitical, impulsive and intrusive nature of the tourists that outnumber the Vatican's elite security force 100 to 1 on a bad day, and seeing said nature within myself, I've come to understand that deep down, tourists are just nasty people from possibly the same pit of hell that spat out the crappy €1 souvenir colosseum replicas I bought you all from an Indian street vendor named Babala. See, I'd like to think of myself as a nice, well meaning person, but I'm also, no matter how I may try and hide it, a tourist, and a great one at that. It should be noted here that your respective greatness as a tourist is inversely proportional to you respectability as a human being. Tourist are, in it of themselves, very nasty, self-absorbed, arrogant pin-heads who on a regular basis seem to seek out new ways of ruining the life of well meaning local shop owners. I know this, because in the past 7 hours, I have ruined the lives (or at least weeks) of several poor, innocent shopkeepers with my own arrogance, insistence on avoiding their native language, and complaining about the 24 hour digital clock hanging on their wall, as well as continually ranting on their prefered method of transportation. The most unfortunate part is that, I really am a well meaning person, but like a fish out of water, I'm out of my element, and so it's only natural, and almost expected of me to flop around violently and aimlessly until the 70 year old man selling me my tchotchkes decides to put me out of my misery.

Having said that, despite the previous, I had a wonderful time at the Vatican. The one thing that I'd like to point out though, is that although so many people sing the praises of the sistine (sistine pretty much just meaning 16th) chapel (the chapel itself is famous for the last judgement painting on the far wall, depicting an enthroned Jesus harshly judging mankind and the virgin Mary at his side, looking away, all surrounded by souls in purgatory, heaven, and hell) , the sistine chapel really wasn't the highlight of my day.  Don't get me wrong, michaelangelo was an amazing painter, even more so if you realize that he was actually a sculptor by trade (apparently I was the only one who didn't know this, however, what I did know was that good old Mikey was a self-absorbed jerk who said "no" to the pope, an offense punished by death, just because he felt like it), but all the beauty of the chapel pails in comparison to the monumental work within St Peter's Basilica. The first thing I should point out is that there are no paintings inside, only mosaics and sculptures...lots and lots of sculptures. The building itself is gigantic, as are the statues themselves, and the work is breath-taking. I don't know why, but paintings and drawings always've seemed...bland to me. Maybe it's because I can understand the process and the effort it took. But sculpture has always amazed me. There's something about the sheer scale of the statues and carvings that astound me, the amount of work and detail is breathtaking. It ever you go to Rome, you may see the chapel, but St. Peter's outshine that...by a lot.

Those letters are as big as people...beat that Mike....

Another interesting thing about the Vatican is their statue collection.  See, they claim to have 6,000 statues in said collection.  This however, isn't really true.  See, the 6,000 statues actually account towards the Vatican's 6,000 favorite statues.  The total number of statues in their collection is in the hundreds of thousands, some complete, others broken, but all of them adding to the already substantial value of what is already the richest country in the world.

This wall is worth more than your soul

(by the way, I'm not going to have Internet access for sure tomorrow, so this might be the last you hear of me for a few days.....just FYI)

(also, you're all going to have to trust me when I say that I've been taking pictures, it's just that due to unfortunate circumstances, am unable to upload them :(