Travel Rome @ 7 November 2009

I know I have been slacking in blogging recently. The reason being is that I travel less frequent recently. Hmm.. Is that a good thing or bad thing, I wonder. Cut it short, I had a full transit day in Rome on the way back to Malaysia from Venezuela. Let say, South America never stop amazed me. Though, I did not have chance to wander around Venezuela and therefore, no photos. But I had plenty of time to revisit Rome. My last visit to Rome was about 10 years ago, right after my graduation. Damn, scary to even think about how fast the time passes!

In my memory, Rome was sunny hot, dry and crowded. This time, Rome was breezy, still sunny but much relaxing! Of course, statues and buildings everywhere were still screaming to my Canon camera to flash. After reading and watching Angels and Demons, I said to myself - Silly me, why not follow Dan Brown’s foot step, save my time to think about the itinerary. I then visited St Peter Square & Basilica, Vatican Museum for the masterpiece Sistine Chapel and Colosseum.

I did not remember if I saw Swiss Guard in my previous visit but I spotted them this time. They were guarding the St. Peter Basilica. They wore those silly, circus-like, orange-blue-stripe baggy uniform, exactly what we saw in Angel and Demon. St. Peter Basilica was still as impressive as it was.

I was probably too young to appreciate Sistine Chapel 10 years ago but this time, the masterpiece just struck me speechless. The guide book explained that the essence of the design was to create a ‘seamless’ and ‘endless-feeling’ ceiling. Michelangelo was such as a damn good interior designer. The Last Judgment was insanely animated after so many millenniums. Well, as usual, I eavesdropped around to listen the stories from those tour guides. Apparently, Michelangelo was so furious when a high-rank priest condemned his work as being too obscene. He then purposely painted, in the fresco, that the bad-mouth priest slumped in lowest hell, with his genital bitten by an evil python. Hah… Michelangelo definitely had some sense of black humour.

Strolling to Colosseum to take the perfect night shot. I was standing there for almost an hour to capture a perfect nightscene. What a regret to left my tripod at home!

The revisit could not be better. Hope to revisit miss-out Trevi Fountain and Pantheon someday and I guess that should be easy because - All roads lead to Rome!