Italy as it Happened...Day 12

Italy as it Happened...Day 12

Sunday, April 21st

 

What is a person supposed to do when they are in Rome; on a Sunday? Did I hear you say, "Go to church?" If so, you are absolutely correct. And we didn't go to just any church. After a light breakfast, Kerry and I jumped onto the metro and headed for St. Peters Square (home and office of the Pope - Vatican City). When we arrived an echo of church-goers could be heard singing and chanting all around us. There were thousands of people, just like us, taking it all in. Did we actually get to see the Pope? Yupp, on the 12 foot Trinitron digital screens. He was right there, inside St. Peter's Basilica, taking care of business. AWESOME!

As we left the square a couple of hours later we some how turned left instead of right and ended up being sort of lost. "No problem," I suggested as I looked in all directions trying to find a familiar landmark. The only thing I could see that I recognized was the massive wall that surrounds Vatican City. "Let's just follow the wall," I suggested to Kerry and she agreed. Go figure, the direction we took ended up being the longest portion of the wall. To get back where we started we ended up following that wall for at over an hour. Finally we saw some steps and at the bottom stood one of the Pope's guards, in his pretty bright colored uniform. He was obviously off duty as he wasn't wearing his cap and was just standing there, at the bottom of these steps, smoking a cig.

"Is this the way to the front gate?" I asked while pointing to the top of the stairs. He looked at me as if I were an alien and replied, "Very far." "No Duh!" Finally after informing him that we didn't really care about the distance but were more focused on the direction, he nodded that the main gate to the Vatican City compound was in that direction. Then he turned his back to us and continued working on that smoke, trying to ignore us, wishing we would go away. Grazsi was all I could say to him as we continued our search for that main gate, and the metro station near it.

 

After finding the metro, near the front gate I reminded Kerry that we just did something amazing. We just walked around an entire country. Vatican City is considered a sovereign nation in itself thus our walk around its total circumference was a walk around an entire country. I thought that was pretty cool. Kerry agreed.

Once on the metro we headed for our next planned stop, the Spanish Steps. From the metro station we had to walk 8 or 9 blocks before arriving at the upper most landing. Street vendors, musicians, artists and pick pockets  were everywhere. It was very exciting. As we explored each landing on our way down, we shot dozens of photos. We will delete the bad shots later, but for now, we were the average tourist, click, click click. Yeah, I know...it isn't like us to follow the other cattle (tourist), but this time it was fun.

After finding a corner sandwich shop, Kerry and I had a bite for lunch. For 3.20 euro's we bought a spinach and tomato Panini and split it as we continued walking towards the Trevi Fountain, another very popular tourist must-see location. It was worth every mile.

 

 

Finally we decided it was time to head towards a homeward bound metro. Along the way we saw a McDonalds and thought we should check it out. We enjoy looking at what McD's has to offer in foreign countries. They always customize their menu to fit the local society and usually it is pretty good. In this one we found an espresso bar which pleased Kerry. For me, I went directly to the ice cream bar and ordered a Conocrock (a healthy serving of gelato served in a sort of waffle cone with tons of hot dark chocolate poured on top. Oh My GOSH...My ice cream was so good, Kerry enjoyed every lick. 

When we finally reached home Kerry cooked some more pasta with veggies in garlic (lots of garlic). Then we decided to go out and explore other neighborhoods (by metro) and had a great time seeing how the average Italian lives. We walked (and talked) where the native Romans walk and talk.

Now we get to sit back and smell the roses. Back at home for the night we drank some herbal tea while checking Facebook for updates back home. We also made a few postings of our own, just to let everyone know we were still doing great. The last thing we did before turning off the lights was fill out a few postcards for the Grandkids and then we played a few games of Candy Crush Saga. Now that was a win win sort of day. Tomorrow we had a busy schedule planned so our rest was needed, not only for what we did but also for what was yet to come.