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Published: April 14th 2009
Vatican City at Night
Before we walked around the entire country.My internship at the U.S. Mission to the EU was over and my Italian ‘vacation’ had started. (As if this entire trip hasn’t felt like a vacation.) It took me about two and a half hours to get from the airport to my hostel. As soon as I finally found it, the receptionist opened the door for me and asked if I have a hungry friend waiting there for me. I had to laugh because, yup, Michael was there, waiting for me so we could go out and grab dinner together. I was so happy that he was at the hostel as he no longer had a phone and I wasn’t exactly sure where/when I would be able to meet him. I put down my bags and we quickly headed out for some delicious Italian food.
Our hostel, the oldest hostel in Rome, was literally one block away from the Vatican. We ate some pasta and drank some Chianti while peering at the Vatican and the great wall that surrounds it. After dinner, we decided to take a little stroll around the Vatican…you know just an after dinner walk around a country, no big deal. Our traverse around the world’s
smallest country only took about 30 minutes. We were rather tired after that and wanted to wake up early to see if we could go to Palm Sunday mass at the Vatican, so after that just went to bed.
Around 7:45 a.m., we left our hostel and there were already massive hoards of crowds walking towards the Vatican. We got in line and after we stood there for about 15 minutes, we realized everyone around us had tickets. We asked them when/where they had gotten them and some girls next to us told us they had had them for weeks. Oops. Well, we got out of line and asked a guard if there were any way we could still get tickets. One of them told us to just get in line. Surely, they wouldn’t turn away anyone from the Vatican, would they?! We played it cool, sneaking our way through the metal detectors and to some seats without having to really show any tickets to anyone. We actually ended up with really good seats. Then we sat and waited for mass to start.
We were a little unsure about whether the Pope would be giving the mass or
Palm Sunday Mass
Yeah, that's the Pope! not, but as Michael said, “What else did he have to do on Palm Sunday?” The mass was outside in St. Peter’s Square and it was completely packed full of people. How we ended up getting in, I will never know. The mass was about 3 hours long, but after all the waiting we were there for well over 4. It truly was beautiful, all the palms and music. We couldn’t have asked for a nicer day. Michael and I even got a bit of a sunburn. And, low and behold, the Pope did give the mass. He even rode around in his Pope-mobile through the isles afterwards! It was great!
After mass, we decided to make our way around Rome hitting as many sites as we possibly could. We visited the Pantheon, which I didn’t realize is still used as a Basilica. We threw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, with our back facing the fountain and the coin in our right hand mind you, to ensure that one day we will return to Rome. Next, we found our way to the Colosseum to see if we could make our way in through all the tourists.
We
With My Palms
...or olive branches. found a tour guide service (or rather they found us) as soon as we got there that let us join them and go right inside, beating all the crowds, and gave us a tour of the Colosseum. Built between 70 and 80 a.d., the Colosseum could hold 50,000 people and was used for the famous gladiator fights, reenactments of ship battles, and dramas based on classic mythology. Our tour guide (whom we named Giovanni because we couldn't remember his name) even told us that it is estimated that over 700,000 people and over 1 million animals were killed inside the Colosseum. Crazy. How far humanity has come.
The Colosseum was truly beautiful and was much bigger than I had expected. After we were done touring, we walked through some of the old Roman ruins and visited the old chariot race track. We spent a lot of time in the old Roman area and as we were walking back past the Colosseum that evening there was lightning flashing all around in the sky. I tried so hard to get a picture of the Coliseum with lightning in the background, but alas, was unable to. We called it an evening and
Pope Benedict XVI Himself!
"Looking good today Pope!" prepared ourselves for the next day in Rome.
On our last day in Rome, we woke up early in order to head to Vatican City again. Today we were going to tour the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica.
The inside of the Vatican is even more extravagant than the outside. Beautiful paintings by the likes of Rafael and Michelangelo adorn the halls and ceilings. Amazing works of art, such as some by Salvador Dali, that you would never expect to find in the Vatican can also be found there. We spent hours and hours going through the grand hallways lined in gold with sculptures and tapestries. In each room we stepped into all I could think was, wow, I wonder how many people the decorations in this room could feed if they were sold.
The highlight for both of us was, without a doubt, the Sistine Chapel. Michelangelo’s masterpiece was breathtaking and absolutely indescribable. Just seeing painting after painting with so much detail and underlying meaning was incredible to see. Though you aren’t supposed to take any pictures, since Michael and I hadn’t really been following many of the other rules at the Vatican up to
that point, we both snuck pictures of ‘The Creation of Adam,’ or tried to.
After gawking over the Sistine Chapel, we climbed the 500 some steps to the top of the cupola on St. Peter’s Basilica for an amazing view of Rome and then visited the crypt and prayed next to Pope John Paul II’s grave. All in all, our time spent in Vatican City was incredible. I would highly recommend anyone who ever has the chance to go to the Vatican, go. It’s not just for a bunch of fundamentalist Catholics and surprisingly and disappointingly seemed not even that spiritual of a place. I couldn’t even find any holy water in St. Peter’s Basilica.
In the late afternoon when Michael and I finally had seen and done all there was to see and do in Vatican City, we wandered around Rome some more and ended up eating street food for dinner on the Spanish steps. We then walked by and found the American Embassy Rome, which is a ridiculously large and beautiful old palace and then watched the sunset over Rome from the Villa Medici. We got a bottle of wine and spent our last night in
Rome hanging out in front of the Trevi Fountain, a beautiful site in the day, but even more beautiful at night. We even saw a sexy undercover Italian cop bust some underage drinkers as he surveyed the ever-growing crowd around the Fountain.
With that, our time in Rome had come to an end. The next morning we were off to a new country, San Marino, a micro-state in the middle of Italy.
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