All roads lead to Rome?

This weekend I did Florence and Rome, tourist style. I wandered through hazy hot streets in search of art galleries and shoe stores. I looked at Michelangelo's David, propped on a marble plinth about ten feet above my head, and I thought, A man made that?

The David was the first classical sculpture I ever saw. I was on the Internet, doing research for my art journal. The picture inspired me. I trucked in with my clipping the next day. "This is the kind of stuff I want to create!" I told Ms. Fishman, who had been pestering me (without success) to find my artistic voice. She frowned. "Well you have about ten years," she said. "Why?" "The marble dust will clog up your lungs and kill you." So I gave it up. But standing in front of the David, I realized two important things: 1) I was finally seeing one of the reasons I came to Italy and 2) It was as good as I thought it would be.

That proved the theme of my weekend. I wandered through the fragmented temples and fallen columns in the Roman Forum, I craned my neck to figure out the ceiling of St. Peter's Basilica, I tossed a few € into the Trevi fountain. The thing is, people have been looking at these same sites for hundreds of years. And I realized why. It is absolutely worth seeing every single one of them.

I skipped class and stayed in Rome an extra day to see the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel. I'm glad I did, partly because I wanted to see them, and partly because I wanted to finish seeing Rome. Carolyn and I emerged from the Vatican with two hours before our train left, and realized that we had nothing else we wanted to do. We saw every single thing we wanted to see, and I won't forget any of it, and right now I don't think I'll ever come back to Rome.