Moose in the Kitchen

My favorite vacation activity is to loudly announce, “I should be at work right now!” at the dinner table before cackling and snorting wine out my nose while the waitress hovers uncomfortably in the background, wondering if it’s safe to approach or if something else is planning to fly out of my nasal passage and into my seafood pasta. I did this more than a few times while we were in Italy. I’m a graceful example of American womanhood and a charming travelling companion.

Rome was the first stop. I felt rather provincial, what with my mass-produced shoes and my staunch Californian conviction that if a bar was established in 1967 it’s OLD. It has HISTORY. Rome was the center of the world 2,000 years ago and, as such, enjoyed a hearty chuckle at my idea of old. I was enthralled for three full days, wandering around and thinking about how Rome is even possible. Possible that so many pieces of an ancient civilization could survive and meld into modern day life without the help of Bill, Ted, and their phone booth.

The ancient and the modern world coexist rather peacefully. Which feels odd to one unused to being surrounded by millenia-old bricks and mortar until you realize that, for the locals, the Pantheon isn’t an awe-inspiring example of man triumping over the forces of nature. It’s that place on the Piazza della Rotunda that you really want to avoid because it’s swarming with people brandishing cameras. Essentially the same relationship I have with Fisherman’s Wharf.

Our hotel was a block away from the Vatican and we got an eyeful of the Catholic folk going about their day. Priests strolled the streets carrying laptops. We passed a large wooden door as a nun popped her head out to peer through her thick glasses onto the street. But not one of them let us in on the dirty secret of Catholicism.

You want to know what the dirty secret of Catholicism is, don’t you?

It’s not what you think.

You might be disappointed.

OK, fine.

That Sistine Chapel everyone talks about? Pure fiction.

I know you wanted to hear that the pope is actually animatronic and all that pomp and ceremony is to mask the fact that they just screw a new head onto the robot every 20 years. But, no. The Sistine Chapel, for most of our tour through the Vatican Museum, didn’t seem to exist. Had we but known it, this was grim foreshadowing of all our attempts to travel through Italy aided by Italian road signs.

Walking through room number 16 of the Vatican Museum, we began to suspect a fraud. All signs say “This way to the Sistine Chapel!” but none actually take you there. Around room 27, we began to loudly postulate about the role P.T. Barnum played in the design. We figured we’d eventually be led to a door that said “Sistine Chapel! In here!”, we’d walk through and find ourselves in a parking lot with a sign reading, “Just kidding! Suckers.”

We did find the Sistine Chapel eventually. We’d have been fine if we followed the hordes of Japanese tourists, but Japanese tourists are really. very. slow. and we thought we’d be clever and pass them up. So we ended up accidentally taking a tour of the deserted modern art rooms. There’s a reason no one goes to the Vatican to see modern art.

People go to the Vatican Museum because it’s the site of the famous brawl between Michelangelo and the pope who commissioned the chapel. It’s true. Epic clashes during construction culminated in the pope crawling up on the scaffold to deck Michelangelo. THAT’S why people go to the Vatican Museum. Oh, and there are some paintings on a ceiling.

You know when you’ve reached the Sistine Chapel because the building temperature jumps about ten degrees and the noise level rises to a steady hum. The “no talking in the Sistine Chapel” edict is an acknowledged joke. Acknowledged to the point that they put some poor soul on staff just to stand on the dais at the head of the room and shout “Silencio!” every 30 seconds over the heads of hundreds of tourists who couldn’t care less what your damn Italian rules are. I wonder how often he feels hoarse and annoyed, knowing that his life’s work is utterly futile.

Or maybe not. For all I know, he’s up there composing his soon-to-be bestselling expose about the animatronic pope.