June 21st, 2012

I felt super blessed today. The Vatican was so beautiful. Like seriously I just felt so blessed. I saw the Sistine Chapel and all of Michelangelo's work was just a blessing to be in front of to look at and to see. It is 100 times better to see in person then on a computer screen. Every piece of the paintings comes with a little story either has to do with the Bible or just in the process of the paintings. For example the last piece he did was called the Last Judgment and when asked to paint this piece the Pope allowed him to paint with whatever colors he liked. In the olden days, colors like blue and red were really expensive to paint with because most of the paints came from ground up rocks that were made into a liquid and then put on wet plaster. The wet plaster technique painting is called Fresco painting. Fresco paintings last forever because the plaster absorbs the paint. Only problem with fresco painting is that when your make a mistake you have to chip it away from the wall, plaster over and start again. Not many artists liked that little problem :/ But his pieces were amazing. Just pure genius.

Next was St. Peter's Basilica. This is about 4 football fields big and the highest point is about 400 ft. tall. That is quite large for a church. This church is so unique! The have relics of everything in their. For example, St. Peter's Basilica contains a couple of the nails that Jesus was nailed to the cross with, it contains the cloth that was used to wipe Jesus face, it also contains every Popes body underneath the church in a crypt and lastly St. Peter's Basilica was built on top of St. Peter's grave. Just so cool. The church was covered in status. Like covered and Michelangelo created a lot of those status as well as doing the paintings in the Sistine Chapel. (Fun fact: Michelangelo studied painting but was known for his sculptures until he created the Sistine Chapel. He was pretty much forced to paint the Sistine Chapel by the Pope even though Michelangelo really did not want to.) Ok I know this is a long blog but last thing. Ok so their is two saints that are buried above ground in a glass box that the public can see. Legit you can see the saints lying right in front of you. Like you can see them! Sorry but it was so creepy and really interesting all at the same time.

Off to Florence tomorrow.

Chao Chao