The Vatican and Rome

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The Vatican
We arranged for a private tour of the Vatican at 9am. We met at a little restaurant on the east side of the Vatican called Paolo Di Paolini Giampaolo. Lesson number two to be learned here. We arrived early and decided to have a little breakfast. The waiter was nice and offered omelets and coffee and juice, sure why not. While we waited for the omelets he brought some fresh croissants and bread to snack on. The breakfast bill was 69 euros! Lesson learned ask for a menu for Breakfast or Lunch. This sounds counter intuitive from what we had been told to always try the specials at restaurants and that many don’t have menus, which is what we assumed for this little Trattoria. If it was any consolation the food was good.

The Vatican was incredible. I highly recommend a private tour. We were a group of six people and were able to ‘jump’ the lines in many places that gave us more time enjoy the Vatican. Our tour guide, Michael, was an architecture student studying his PhD. He was American and spent his time between Spain, France and Italy. He was very knowledgeable about the history of the Vatican and all its art. I don’t know if I could say I had a favorite on the tour, it would have to be a tie between the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica. The name of the tour company we used was Context Travel.

Wondering Rome

After the tour we were hungry and wanted to mail some post cards from the Vatican so they would have the Vatican country stamp on them. But some dignitary was leaving in the next half hour and the post office and gift stores were closed. We bought postcards across the street from the Vatican; you could probably save a little coin if you can your postcards elsewhere in advance. Anyway after lunch we went back to the Vatican to hit the gift shop and mail our postcards.

The rest of the day we spent wondering around. We visited the Piazza Navona, Fontana di Trevi, Piazza di Spagna and the Pantheon. And of course stopped for a couple bottles of wine along the way. Dinner was recommended to us by our Concierge at a little restaurant down the street called Lampara Srl. By far the best food we have had so far. Dinner started with Carpaccio and Prosciutto wrapped around fresh melon. Dinner was a lobster on spaghettini, OMG was it good. The lobster was broken up and served on the spaghetti with a simple white sauce. Washed it down with a couple bottles of wine and called it a night.

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