What Happened at the Vatican

Wednesday morning began with a quick shower and a breakfast of several pastries, a bowl of cereal, and some espresso--one of six options from a boxy chrome machine on the juice and coffee counter--before heading out into the Italian capitol. 

During the daylight, the side street of Campo Romano seemed harmless enough; the night before, however, Nick and I had felt quite differently, walking past empty cars parked along the chain link fence on the right hand side, the graffitied and crumbling brick wall off to the left. A large shed in the middle of that field did not help our nerves either. Plus, the hour was late--just a bit before midnight. 

Yet this morning, in the sunshine again, everything seemed golden and wonderful. There was a sort of romanticism to the non-bourgeois surroundings of our "hotel" and our conversation was light and airy, making plans as we are forever doing. Today's first stop would be the Vatican. 

As you walk up the road toward the Vatican, you are accosted by scalpers, more than you care to count. "Are you going to the Vatican today?" they question you as they rush up with stacks of flyers and brochures in their fists. When you keep walking and pretend not to hear them: "Do you speak English? English? O italiano?" 

These scalpers possess a willful determination that is not to be denied by merely walking away so you have to tell each and every one of them, "No thank you. No we're not going to the Vatican." Even though you of course are walking directly towards it. 

We arrived to find massive stone pillars and gates between these pillars. Some people, coming from the inside already, were hopping over these gates, but although Nick suggested that we just sneak in for a free visit, I decided that I would rather not run the risk of being caught and possibly fined or deported, if we were seen as a security risk. Nick and I can come across as a pretty fierce pair. I would not have been able to blame the Italian police for their decision. 

But we continued left, walking around the arcing path of the pillars until we found an open space between their horse-shoe configuration where the gates were open and people entered and left freely. Police and security guards milled about, but no one seemed to be demanding tickets or payment at the gate so the two of us made our way in and pulled out our cameras. 

It's hard to take in the Vatican all at once simply due to the enormity of its size. Perhaps if I had compound eyes like a fly and could look at more than 180 degrees at a time . . . but anyhow. 

Gray stone pillars reach up high into the clouds, which that day looked like fluffy cotton balls on the backdrop of a blue sky. The sun beamed down, warming the entire plaza in front of the Vatican. A fountain stood on either side with beautifully clear running water shooting up into the warm air and cascading back down into the pool of the cream colored basins. An obelisk, towering high above the crowds, stood at the center of the plaza. 

It did not take long for me to notice the crowds either. So many people were gathered in the plaza, and many stood all in the front half of it, the closest to the actual building of the Vatican. Then I noticed high platforms with news cameras and a single man on each platform working the camera. Behind us, at the top of the curve of pillars, another expensive looking piece of filming equipment perched, pointing at the magnificent domed building across the plaza. 

"Hey Nick?"

Distractedly, taking another thousand photos of every possible angle of the fountain, he answered, "What's up?"

"I think something's going on here. There's an awful lot of people for a Wednesday."

"Nah," he brushed it off casually. "It's the Vatican. It's popular with tourists. And this is the week before Easter so it's holy week or something."

"Yeah, but the cameras?"

He shrugged, coming over toward me now. "I don't know. It's the Vatican. They like filming it."

So we walked around, headed over by a fence where hundreds of people jammed themselves up again to see . . . nothing. All I saw were about a score of nicely dressed officials on the upper most steps of the Vatican and couple of those Swiss guards with the bright yellow, maroon, and blue costumes. I snapped a couple more photographs. 

We moved around more toward the center and that's when I noticed that there was chairs in the front half of the plaza and that everyone within sight was either standing on a chair now or climbing up to get on one. Nearby, a group of nuns started clapping and--sounding like a group of overexcited cheerleaders--started shouting, "Papa Francesco! Papa Francesco!"

"Hey Nick?" I called again. He was taking photos of the giant obelisk now. 

"Yeah?"

"Isn't the name of the new Pope, Francesco?"

"Something like that."

He looked at me, I looked at him. Once we made eye contact we knew. "Holy shit!" I said running toward the back of the crowd and jumping up on the nearest chair. People were screaming and clapping now. Some were climbing on each other, the fences, to get a look at . . . 

THE POPE! Papa Francesco himself!

And cue the cameras. Although he was a small white dot no larger than a pencil eraser from our perspective, Nick and I indeed saw the Pope. By accident. Out of the thousands of total people in the plaza, at least hundreds had probably come hours in advance, well aware of his visit and titillated beyond belief to see the new Pope, planning days ahead of time, whenever they found out he was going to make his appearance. 

Nick and I, two American college kids on a spring break vacation, happened to choose to come to the Vatican on Wednesday, happened to go in the morning, and happened to be there for the ten minutes that he made his appearance before exiting with the Swiss guard. There's no word for that kind of luck! I mean, how many people can say that they saw the Pope? Accidentally? 

After the Vatican, we spent the day wandering about, eating gelatto, seeing castles, parks, and walking along the Fiume River. The river is the color of chocolate milk with a tinge of Statue-of-Liberty green. In a word, lovely. (Did I mention that it was to be a sarcastic word?). The bridges traversing the river, of white and gray stone with statues of angels and saint, were beautiful however and these I photographed eagerly, all the while trying to avoid the river in most of my shots, although I did take one picture of a derelict barge, covered in debris and quite possibly one of the most bedraggled watercrafts I'd ever seen. 

Throughout the day, and in fact the whole trip from our first visit to the el Rastro street market and on through the entirety of our Rome vacation, Nick proved himself to be a bargainer that would have put traveling merchants of the Renaissance period to shame. He oftentimes would go up to a stall with some object or other in hand say nothing more than, "Tres?" and what was once a 7 euro product became his for 3 euro. It was almost magical to watch, as he did this a handful of times in both Spain and Rome. 

Emboldened by Nick's success, a wooden magnet caught my eye at a small outdoor stall in Rome and I took it to the old man running the place saying, "Este por dos euros?" ("This for two euros?"). He corrected me, saying that the price was 3.50. So I tried again, repeating myself, smiling, pointing at the magnet, hoping that my clear touristness and being a young lady would help me win him over. 

No. He launched into a stream of what I can only assume were Italian curse words. Yelling and gesticulating wildly, I realized that I must have deeply insulted his family pride or his country or God or something by accident so I silently put the magnet on his counter and left, driven out by the brisk wind of heated swears urging me forward like a ship caught in a good strong ocean breeze. 

Ah well. Sorry, Mom. That magnet was intended for you. 

I gave up on my bargaining days after this, having only had a brief but traumatic foray into the world of haggling. I suppose I leave it to the professionals. Some people just have the gift. 

The evening concluded with a supper of pizza--Nick ordered seafood pizza which ended up being soggy and gross whilst I ordered mushroom pizza with a side of spinach, which I put on top of the pizza and liked pretty well. It's strange to this American girl, but no where could you find sausage pizza. They'll make you anchovie pizza, seafood, vegetable, just cheese, ham, "pepperoni" (which I highly suspect is simply another kind of ham and not the pepperoni that we United States citizens would expect), and a host of other fun flavors. 

We collapsed into bed that night, having walked a total of ten hours that day and only sitting down on the Spanish steps for five minutes and at dinner for about 45 minutes. How we did it, I can only refer back to what I said two posts ago: intrepidity. Boldly pushing through the stinging feeling in your feet, the thirst in the back of your throat, the ache of your back and legs, you--the intrepid, true wanderlusting traveler!--push forward beyond any limitations that previously had existed and defy the comprehension of the word 'fatigue'.

At least we slept well that night. At 5am, our alarms went off and, groggy and leaden with the weight of an incomplete sleep, we rose to face what would come to be known forever as the Travel Day From Hell. 

But that's its whole own post.