Blessed to be in Rome
It was such a long day!
We met at 6:15 to leave the ship and were greeted by our driver shortly after 6:30. I had slept less than an hour, so was very excited to be in the van and crash for a nap.... or not. I maybe dozed a few minutes before entering Rome when Marlene woke up from her nap and said, “Where are we?”. Needless to say, we all were awake for sure after that.
Due to our extremely early departure, we were dropped at our Airbnb much early than anticipated. Bill was the gracious host, as ever, and stayed with our bags while our driver graciously made one more stop for the rest of us outside of Vatican City.
The reason for the manic departure was one - Pope Francis and his anticipated arrival in Vatican Square - and we were not disappointed (seeing the pictures is believing).
We were able to come within 10 feet of Pope Francis. It was an incredible experience!
We all went back to the Airbnb and Bill went to a shop a few doors down for some lunch -porchetta sandwiches, while I had a short nap. Everyone else relaxed or napped too.
We walked to the Vatican museum entrance to meet our guide at 1:30. Palma did a great job of ushering us through the massive crowds. She showed us lots of statues while we adjusted to her Roman accent and strained to hear her over the crowds. The museum is huge and filled with long rooms of paintings, statues, frescos, tapestries, etc. - so beautiful and so amazing!
We went through the Raphael rooms with awesome paintings before entering the Sistine chapel. It was very crowded, but Palma gave us all enough time and had done a great job in advance preparing us with her book, so we could get a good appreciation for the work that Michaelangello had done - all on his own and over two periods. Once at the beginning and once at the end of his career.
We then went into St Peter’s Cathedral, but everyone was getting pretty tired, so Palma did her best to point out the highlights and kept the rest of the program pretty short. Norm and I explored the crypt,
Bill thought that we had not been through enough and so we dragged ourselves over to Piazza Nouvana. We picked one of the first restaurants and ordered something to eat. The food was OK, but extremely expensive because of the beautiful square and fountains.
And if that wasn’t enough, we went on further to see the Pantheon. It was closed, so Bill and Norm began guiding us home. It was a bit of a train wreck and took longer that it should have because Google kept turning us in different directions. Eventually we made it home and everyone was glad that we did not have to be anywhere until 1:00 the next day.
