Here's to the crazy ones. The rebels. The troublemakers. The ones who see things differently. While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do...
The Vatican
Vatican City is a curious place. According to Wikipedia, it is a landlocked sovereign city-state whose territory consists of a walled enclave within the city of Rome. The Vatican City is approximately 110 acres (0.44 km2), and with a population of barely over 800, is the smallest country in the world by both population and area! Fascinating right? And thats without even taking into account the whole Pope thing, or the whole crazy Christian opulence extravanganza.
I've always wanted to visit the Vatican - seeing representations of it in the culture and the media really does make it seem too weird to be true. I wanted to know if it was really as awe-inspiring, opulent and rich as it seems? So, on my travels around Italy recently, I visited Rome (one of my FAVOURITE cities ever!) and when visiting Rome, how can you pass up the opportunity to do some Papal sight-seeing?! Thus, my journey into the weird weird world of The Vatican began!
Well, words really can't describe how rich everything looks, and how big it all is! Vatican City is one of the oddest places I have ever been to, least of all because men dressed like this are dotted around everywhere:
I have been in many churches in my time, each of them splendid and grand, but the Vatican really does take it up about 400 levels. Every inch of the place is covered in intricate, beautiful drawings and paintings. Take this little corridor for example;
I'm not even exaggerating - this is literally just a boring old corridor that has absolutely no significance at all. Absolutely EVERYTHING, no matter how seemingly irrelevant, is plastered in gold and intricately engraved pictures. It is just crazy. (And also must lead to some pretty heavy tourist-fatigue - the amount of snapping and wowing and pointing that a tourist can get up to in The Vatican is EXHAUSTING!!)
I am really happy that I got to visit the Vatican as it really is one of those "seeing is believing" deals. More photos of my time in Italy in general can be found here - enjoy!