In February, I was lucky enough to travel to Rome for five days with EF Tours.  It was not my first time in Rome, but nevertheless people asked me “how I liked it” when I came back.  My eternal opinion on Rome is this: Rome is always sitting there, being awesome, and waiting for people to come and visit.  If someone doesn’t like Rome, that’s not Rome’s problem.  It’s a serious character flaw to not like Rome.

Some might turn this train of reasoning around.  You could say that is is a serious character flaw to be more excited about street art than the classics.  Thus, my favorite story from this wee trip to Rome.  As our group was rounding the corner to enter The Vatican I looked across the street and saw some blue and white tiles that made me jump up and down exclaiming to the rest of my group- “Look!  It’s a Space Invader!”

I’ve only ever seen a globally known street artist once before, when on the DLR in London I whizzed past a Shepard Fairey “Obey” poster on the side of an old factory.  I was delighted to see it.  So here I was, in one of the art capitals of the world, a few walls away from a centuries old masterpiece of a ceiling, and I am rejoicing over some illegal tiles on the side of the building that no one else in my group seems to get.

I guess there’s no accounting for taste.