Mission: Vatican

Although our entrance into the Holy State wasn’t quite as stealth as Tom Cruise and company in Mission Impossible 3, Ian did manage to inadvertently sneak a cheese knife through the gamut of guards and metal detectors set up to protect the Pope from terrorists (oops). Sometimes you have to go to great efforts to protect your snacks. We, the Cheese-a-linis, (self-christened mafia names to make the whole Italy experience seem more realistic) rendezvoused with Mr. and Mrs. Pepperoni at about 0900 hours in Saint Peter’s Square as planned. On this bright, sunny day, the Square was filled with flag-waving people from all over the world. The Holy Father himself would be coming in a matter of minutes to speak, and you could feel the excitement in the crowd. I don’t mean to be irreverent, but as we sat there and watching the nuns parading in past the order of monks who wore hot-pink accents to their normal monk-ly attire, we had to remark at how much it all resembled some sort of holy sporting event.

(In Italian, of course):
“And now, we’d like to thank the nuns from the Holy Catherine of Notre Dame from Frankfurt, Germany for coming today!” Screams and cheers, presumably from the nuns, came from one corner of the stadium. “…And the nuns from the Convent of Saint Ignatius of Dublin, Ireland!” (More screams from another corner.) “…And the members of the Lion’s Club of Columbus, Ohio!” (Screams from just in front of us.)

Then it was time for him to come. People stood on chairs and craned their necks to see the white-clad figure as he entered the stadium in a car (Pope-mobile?) As he drove around the crowd in circles, waving, people pushed like a bunch of paparazzi to get a closer look and stood on anything they could find to get a picture worthy of taking back home to show Aunt Rhoda. Finally, the car impressively ascended the stairs to take the Pope up to his tent where he would begin the Invocation. The rest was in Italian, so unfortunately I didn’t get much out of it, except for the part where he threw in a little slap on the wrist for all non-Catholic Christians.

We decided to nip out a few minutes early to beat the crowds to the Vatican Museums. Evidently after about ten in the morning the line can get a mile or two long, but since everyone was waiting in line to get their items blessed by the Pope, we lucked out and walked right in. Between arguments on how to pronounce “Medici” (my high school English teacher wouldn’t fail me on this one!), we oohed and ahhed over corridor after corridor covered from top to bottom, including the ceilings and floors, with priceless, history-book-making artwork. I’m used to going to art museums where you walk into a room with about twelve pictures on the wall and stand in front of each one thoughtfully, so this just blew me away. It made us all feel quite small in our ability to even appreciate the love and dedication that went into the tiny details of each massive room. Brock mentioned at one point that Raphael spent four years of his life painting one of the rooms. Wowsa!

Finally, we made our way towards the grand finale, the Sistine Chapel. When you think of a chapel, what do you think of? Prayerful? Serene? Holy? Not this one! People had packed themselves in like there was a cart in the corner giving away free doughnuts. There was a lonely security guard who ushered people annoyingly through the room and screamed “NO PHOTO! NO VIDEO!” in intervals, followed by a loud “SHHHHH!!” towards the murmuring crowds. This became a regular joke for Team Stromboli for the rest of the trip. At one point later, someone even overheard us and said, “Oh, you’ve been the Sistine Chapel, then?” With that said, we couldn’t really appreciate much of the Sistine Chapel, although I did notice that the entire bottom six feet or so of the room was entirely curtains. Painted curtains. Every tiny detail and shadow. Probably some understudy of Michelangelo’s ended up painting only curtains for about five years of his life. I’d like to shake that guy’s hand.

All of that art-appreciation was making us hungry, so we dove into some backstreets to find the real thing. We found it! No tourists, no English-speaking staff, and no English menus, just a tiny little mama-and-papa-run trattoria with great food and a waitress who laughed good-naturedly with us (at us?) when Ian whipped out the Italian phrase book and uttered, “That was divinely tasty.”

After lunch, we wandered around town through famous squares and fountain-dotted piazzas, where artists hang out to paint your picture for a minimal fee. We saw the Pantheon. Then it was time for ice cream. Our friend, Helen, recommended a place near the Pantheon that has over 100 flavors of gelati. Yum town. Soon after we found it, Ian had to take back that fact that the gelati we had eaten the day before was the best he’d ever had.

We made our way back to St. Peter’s Basilica later that afternoon after all of the crowds had gone. Now that is a church. The inside is filled with artwork and statues and beautiful marble floors. You can even see the Popes of days gone by perfectly preserved in little see-through coffins. I don’t think I can really see any more churches, either in Italy or here in England after seeing St. Peter’s. As Amber so poetically put it, “Once you see St. Peter’s, all of the other churches are just kinda ‘yip yip’!”