On City Smells, the Vatican, and Night

Cities smell. Each city we've been in here has a very distinct smell. Most of the cities we visited in Spain were smaller, older cities, so they smelled like brick and horses and old wood and bread baking--not a strong smell at all. Occasionally we would catch a nasty whiff of garbage, but only as we passed a can. Madrid had a little stronger smell, but Barcelona topped them all. If you've ever been to Chicago or New York City or another big city, you know what I mean by the "city smell"--it just smells like a lot of people, a lot of exhaust, a lot of trash, a lot of sewage...basically, a city. Generally not everywhere smells, but the scent is in the air as you walk. Barcelona was like that, except it did smell everywhere; it was hot and dirty, and the entire city smelled like sewage (kind of like how, on band tour this year, when we went through Kansas, the entire state smelled like a feed lot). Rome was a welcome change. It was incredibly hot and humid, with weak air conditioning if any, but the city smell is much nicer--kind of like sausage, I think. I thought maybe I was just crazy, but now we're in Florence, and even though it's kind of a dirty city, it also has the same sausage-like city smell. Must be an Italian thing.


On a different note, the Vatican. (If you are Catholic and reading this, I apologize. Please do not be offended.) To put it plainly, I don't really like the Vatican. I guess to be more technical, I don't like the Vatican Museum (with the Sistine Chapel and tons of Raphael...). I did like St Peter's Basilica and the piazza there. Our visit to the Basilica was great--around 17:00, it was cooling off and a mass was being held, so we climbed the dome with an organ accompaniment. The Musei Vaticani, on the other hand, was an absolute nightmare. We got there early (7:30, our guidebook said it opened at 8:45) so we had a prime spot, half a block from the entrance. The day before we were in line three blocks back and left, walking past the rest of the line as it stretched almost all the way to St Peter's Square. We did not want to wait in a line like that, so we got up crazy early. We ended up waiting almost 2 hours. For some reason the museum didn't open til 10, but we just didn't know that. The museum itself has a lot of great stuff, but we saw mostly tour groups. I think every tour group in the entire world went to the Musei Vaticani that morning at the same time as us. It was actually miserable. Even the Sistine Chapel was completely un-fun, despite being beautiful and an amazing work of art, because it was so crowded and the security guard kept shushing people. Getting out of the museum was also a disaster, but that's another story.

I love cities at night. I love walking through the piazzas and the roads lined with pizzerias and trattorias (we keep seeing "trattorias," but we have no idea what it means, except that food is involved) and cute little cafes with tables spilling out into the road. I love seeing the monuments lit up. Old buildings are either creepy or magical in the dark, and here it's mostly magical. I love watching people stroll around with cups of gelato or sit and chat over their after-dinner cup of coffee. There's so much going on in the city at night, and I love to watch it. Anyway, it's definitely night here, so it's time for me to say Ciao!