The Golden Vatican

Bright and early on December 27th, my alarm went off and I gave myself five extra minutes. Then I dragged myself out of bed at 7:16 and got to work on getting Felix up and moving. By 9 we were all eating and by 10 we were checked out and headed to the car with our luggage. We packed everything in, secured the car and headed back to the bus. Luckily, Italian time is on our side and the 10am bus has not left yet (it's only about 10:15) so we jump on it and shortly it heads out. As we come up to the Colosseum stop, we see that the line to get in is about a mile long (yes, an actual mile, not a figurative one)... for this reason, we decide not to get off at that stop. Instead, we get off at the Piazza Venezia where the museum is free because of its anniversary and the monument to the first King of Italy, Vittorio Emanuele II, is always open to the public (being outside and all). We begin wandering through the museum and are almost immediately separated by impatience and miscommunication. My moment of panic occurred when Felix was not with Ana, who I thought had him, and Rob was nowhere to be found... then suddenly I was the only one of our party in the museum at all. I call Rob and confirm that he has Felix and I relax, confident in the knowledge that I have the only set of car keys so they'll have to rejoin me if they intend to return home. Yes, sometimes that's just how it is with me. We all link up again outside where the monument is and Felix is having a blast pretending to control the eternal flames in front of their Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. It's quite beautiful there and if I had more time, I could definitely stay there a couple hours taking everything in and trying to read the plaques. Felix really enjoyed the freedom of imagination here and was disappointed to leave again, but sitting on the open part of an open-air bus took his mind off of leaving imagination land.

Our next destination was Vatican City to see the Sistine Chapel (and all the cool stuff that comes before it) in the Vatican and St. Peter's Basilica. We arrive at the same stop we were stranded at the night before and wander around looking for bathrooms and tourist info. We find both in a bookstore and across the street I find my Vatican City shot glass. We walk into the piazza in front of St. Peter's and break to discuss how we're going to go through the Vatican when a girl who was strategically placing herself in the piazza to offer tour services to contemplating tourists walked up to us and did her job. We decided it was a good idea and took the tour. Well, most of us thought it was a good idea. Felix was not even remotely happy about going on a tour through "another boring museum"... can you tell?

Despite my misgivings about the tour, it turned out to be a pretty great idea. We were not really prepared to guide ourselves through the Vatican and our tour guide was pretty funny and highly informative. I learned a lot, especially at the beginning as we walked through the Greek museum. Felix got over his frustration when he saw that there actually was cool stuff to look at... when we were told that the gold color in most of the paintings was made using actual gold, he was truly impressed (so was I!). There is a ridiculous amount of art to absorb in the Vatican and I really think there is not enough time in anyone's life to truly study it all. As we made our way through, the halls became steadily more crowded and our tour guide more of a challenge to follow. He was very good at moving through the rooms, though and made it a fun sort of obstacle course plus history lesson. I really enjoyed the tapestries and Felix loved the map room. By the time we got to the Sistine Chapel, we'd already been on the tour for two and half hours. We were given very serious warnings before entering the chapel: no talking, no pictures, expect massive crowding, expect horrific repercussions if you talk or take pictures. They were not kidding. Our guide took us to the entrance then told us where he was going to meet up with us inside because there was no way we were going to make our way through as a solid group. We pushed our way through the intensely crowded room to arrive at the corner our guide indicated, then listened to him whispering in our headsets the somewhat more important details about the paintings in the room. It was pretty amazing just to be inside the Sistine Chapel... it is absolutely beautiful. Fortunately, our guide kept us inside for a good amount of time so that we could really take it all in. While we were inside, people would talk and be shushed by the guards. Some were loud enough to be removed. I saw a couple people take pictures with their phones and have no idea if they were caught, but there's a good chance they got terrible pictures because of the crowding.

Naturally, my camera battery was dying as we exited the Vatican and entered St. Peter's Basilica. The lighting inside was a no-go for my poor camera anyway and I'm grateful that Rob and Ana were both taking pictures also because I had the utmost pleasure of becoming Felix's tour guide while Rob and Ana split off to see everything without the annoyance of a frustrated and overtired ten year old boy. Upon exiting the basilica (with everyone else in Rome!) we had the distinct pleasure of seeing the Swiss guards in their fabulous uniforms. Rob wants one for Christmas next year... just so everyone knows!

Rob's dream uniform...

We left a little later than anticipated (what else is new?!) but fortunately did not have to wait long for transportation back to our car. It was decided that the best option would be to eat at the little restaurant we liked so much the previous day before heading back, which turned out to be a great idea... I had LOTS of mushrooms, which I love and we all were able to take advantage of free restrooms before hitting the road. We left after sunset, but in the winter that's not hard to do and arrived home exhausted but grateful we made the trip! I learned a lot of what not to do on such trips and am determined to return to Rome at least once to get my Trevi Fountain experience!