Third Time's a Charm

          Did you know that there is a sculpture of a lizard in the Vatican? How about that the Coliseum used to be painted?

          Most people have a bucket list of places they want to see before they die. Places that they want to see just once in their lifetime. Some of us get the opportunity to see some of those places more than once.

Seeing a place more than once should start to get old. Yet I just finished my third trip to Rome and I saw things I had never noticed or seen before and learned even more information about places I had.

         The first time you visit a place like the Vatican or the Coliseum you are so overwhelmed by the big picture and getting the photo to prove you were there that you miss the details and everything your tour guide is saying. The second time you are probably still in awe but you pay a bit more attention. By the third time it has to be getting old, right? I expected to be bored for most of my third visit to Rome but I was happily proven wrong.

         For every visit I have made to Rome I have always had a tour guide for the major sites. This is a necessity for all first visitors. The second time it was nice to have a guided tour and I learned and saw even more. I didn’t really want a guide for the third time and I probably could have gone everywhere I wanted to on my own, but I would have missed out on all of the things our guide, Giovanna, showed us.

         One of the great things about tour guides is that they can not only answer most of your questions and help you skip the boring and unimportant, but they also each put their own unique spin on the tours.

         On this trip, Giovanna, our fast walking, brutally honest tour guide, shocked me by not even mentioning some of my favorite statues in the Vatican Museums. My last tour guide had a funny little note about one statue showing a woman in what she declared to be the first mini skirt. The tour guide before that liked to point out all the babies with ducks and talk about how he thought that was odd.

         Giovanna meant business though. She had a few cutesy little things to point out but she was more focused on why things are important, analyzing the details and history and showing you things that no one else notices.

         Everyone who has visited the Vatican knows that a guy who upset Michelangelo is forever in hell with donkey ears right above the door you enter. But did you know that the reason Michelangelo came back all those years after painting the ceiling to do the back wall because he felt it was his obligation to God and the church? Did you notice that the horizon on all the paintings on the sidewalls are at the same level even though they are by different artists?

         These are things I never would have noticed had Giovanna not pointed them out.

         It wasn’t just having Giovanna as a tour guide that got me to learn and see more in Rome. I found myself constantly looking up in this trip. For whatever reason, the decorative ceilings that you find in churches and buildings all around Rome fascinate me. I was used to seeing the big picture but I found myself searching for more.

         I would spend time staring at a statue and looking for something new and I nearly always found it. I found myself using the zoom on my camera more and more to get a little detail rather than a shot of the whole thing.

         I thought I had seen most of what there was to see in Rome, but I was wrong.

         I visited the Galleria Borghese for the first time. I stood inches away from my favorite Bernini statue and some of Caravaggio’s greatest works. I had no idea these works where in Rome and never even heard of the Galleria Borghese until I got to Rome the third time. Now it is one of my favorite places there.

         We climbed Janiculum Hill and stood over Piazza del Popolo to see amazing views of Rome. I never even knew these places existed until my third visit. I never even entered the Pantheon until my third trip. If you think the Pantheon is remarkable from the outside, just wait until you see what the inside holds.

         It’s not to say that everyone should visit Rome three times, but it’s also not to say that you shouldn’t. My advice is to always go into every visit to anywhere with open eyes and to look for something new because you never know what you will find.