The Sistine Chapel is a strange experience, feeling strangely flat from the outside with its patriarchical walls and plain edifice. There are few entrances to it, and when Andre and I are routed to the correct one early on the morning we leave for Siena, it is with one intention: To get a photo of the much talked about, endlessly reprinted, God-fearing Sistine Chapel’s Michelangelo-painted ceiling.

Originally, I had left the Sistine off the to-do list because I left everything off the to-do list. Endless barrage of ‘must-sees’ end up being commercial caterwauls of contraband aimed at making the person you give it to think for a second that it wasn’t a reproduced piece of trash made in Taiwan.

Still, there was an important thing Andre needed to do. His mother made him promise he would get a rosary and a book about the Vatican from the Vatican. The rosary would be blessed by the Pope. The book would be for the coffee table. Coming from a Catholic family, Andre long ago tossed off the moralism and the guilt, but maternal love…that never goes away.

The first time we took off for the Vatican, it was a last minute run to get there before it closed (the hours were odd…and Catholic), getting to a gate of the city (walls, remember?) when the guard halts us and lets a nun go through. We are too late for the Sistine but on time for the Pope.

We abandon the plans for the rosary and see people moving past us…toward St. Andrew’s Cathedral. It stands as an element of the Vatican City, with its open forum dotted by fountains and looked down upon by dozens of statues perched atop columns. Dodging slight drizzles we separate to take pictures - occasionally I hold an umbrella over him to avoid water on his camera. He returns the favor. We are in awe over it and know we must go inside.

Outside, there are security checks. We are used to these by now…same as airports and museums. It occurs to me as I pack up the camera and let them search my bag that our society is increasingly comfortable with these. In our schools, offices. Admittedly, the 16^{th century wasn’t all that worried about guns - they had poison tasters and guards standing round the clock. And then there were the walls, right? Just catches me off guard at points. Like then.}

We pass through and continue to be taken aback by the cathedral’s intensity. Inside the doors, you begin to marvel without end. You take in the statues and the carvings, turning eventually to the ceiling beckoning at you to view the intricacies and the hands that made these things took so long that you cannot appreciate it.

Inside, music plays. Andre and I think it is a choir (which is right) and occasionally there is applause and we listen and take what pictures we can of the different sections. Each huge and overarching like sky. The walls draped in various textures and images that push dimensions - some yielding classics like the Pieta and some replicating the corpse of a dead Pope, whose image resembles the current Pope, who happens to be in there with us.

They applaud for him, only we don’t realize it is the Pope until the procession out of the cathedral begins and people line up, cameras fly. Andre gets excited, wraps his mouth around the words and rushes in to the crowd holding his camera above his head. I do the same, only slower. I use the video cam and, like Andre and the horde, I pop it above my head without thinking (and in retrospect think ‘am I interested in a picture of the Pope?’)…

He is not present on the day we see the Sistine. We join a small lineup outside the Vatican City Museum when it opens - hoping to run in, get pictures of the Sistine and rush out to leave the hotel, grab the rental car, and head for the hills.

Little did we know that the entrance begins the long, long, long journey to the chapel. Don’t get me wrong. I am all about history and museums and old religiously affiliated, guilt-ridden, stuff made from materials ripped from poorer ravaged countries ruled by a religion that casts its form in the shape of an old white guy in a funny hat that is paid by the Mafia. But need it take so long. We go through corridor and corridor, follow signs up here and there, navigating past tour group after tour group, paying slight attention to wall coverings and ceiling engravings masked behind nets and dim lights for their protection. We are bludgeoned by gift counters every 50 feet. And finally we enter the hall that enters to the Sistine Chapel.

Here, the walls get barren, the guards are slightly more attentive and the signage is disturbing because you cannot take pictures inside the Sistine Chapel. WHAT!?! At first, Andre and I are confused - thinking we are understanding it wrong and the line through the camera in red is just to illustrate the avoidance of thumbs in your beautifully shot, completely neat photo of the Sistine-#$*%!-Chapel.

We are not wrong and there are no pictures in the Sistine Chapel. There is a reason for this: The Japanese invested in the renovation of Ol’ Sissie and for 20 years (starting a couple years ago) they get all rights to images of the Sistine. We were mad. Andre was looking around like his wallet was stolen. But we held on to our cameras.

The Sistine experience is a mixed feeling that someone just way overpainted a large room, that the canvas of a room is exemplary, that a bunch of tourists popped into a room is a fire hazard, and that you can flip a middle finger at the Japanese by sneaking photographs in a low light environment without one of the many roaming guards noticing (if they do, they get your camera…and we did see that happen). So, we did. Or rather, I did cause my camera makes no noise (love digital baby) tho, as you can see, the pictures are not great, because the shutter speed had to be really high, causing blurring and most of the pictures were unreadable (those damn bastards!!!!).

You get 20 minutes with the Sistine. They want it quiet (it wasn’t). They want you to reflect on the paintings (most people were upset about the camera thing). They want you to appreciate all the wonderful elements of the experience (being bumped, and repeatedly told in a loud voice to be quiet). After that time, they hurry you out and back into another set of halls until you can get out of the Museum by way of a gift shop explosion.

This took a long time. Longer than I thought - and while I took moments to appreciate the wonders that faith unleashes in artists and thinkers, it is always undermined by what this religion took away from so many others that could have been artists and thinkers. Don’t get me wrong - it isn’t faith I am troubled by, just its application. Here, standing in centuries of wealth piled on wealth piled on wealth, you have to wonder if the point of the walls to keep predators out or to keep predators in.