Rome & Going Radio Silent
Sorry for the lack of
posts recently. (Not that anyone is reading this anyway,
but all 2 of you who are…) Basically I have just been too
busy sightseeing to post anything. And there’s the laziness.
Anyway, Rome was great. Dad,
Sara, Marie, and I arrived on Wednesday morning, and just left today
(Monday afternoon.) We had some great meals, mostly at trattorias
and family restaurants. (Is there a difference?) Lots of
pasta, zuppe, and in general traditional Italian food, even spaghetti
and meatballs. It was pretty fun.
We saw all the major sights,
too: the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, the Roman Forum, and
the Coliseum. The Sistine Chapel was amazing and I think the 2000
restoration really did a lot for it. The colors were brighter and
more vibrant, and in general Michelangelo’s painting “The Last
Judgment” is everything it’s cracked up to be. It was just
breathtaking, and as our tour book put it, arguably the greatest single
achievement in Western art. The painting includes hundreds of
figures, and some of the facial expressions are really
interesting. But it was their bodies that made the work so
fascinating – the work is a celebration of the human form, a frenzy of
twisting, turning, lunging, stretching, soaring, shrieking, straining
bodies. Out of all the figures painted, not one of them was
standing or sitting straight. They were all twisting, turning, or
straining in some way. Unbelievable.
Here’s a copy of the painting.
Other highlights, which I will post
about later, include Notte Bianca and our trip to the main Roman
synagogue to observe the Rosh Hashanah holiday.
UPDATE: The link didn’t work with IE, but it did with Mozilla. I changed the link. It should work now.