Day Eight – Rome – The Last Day

We woke up after a few hours sleep, and went to meet our local guide again for our tour of the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Basilica. While the museums were interesting, at this point, we were really pretty tired of seeing more statues (I did like any sculpture or pot I saw that had sheep related motifs, though). At that point, all we cared about was getting into the Sistine Chapel. There are no photos allowed in the Chapel, although people were taking them all over the place, and there was to be no talking in the Chapel, although they played a 5 minute recording in every language telling people to be quiet, thus defeating the goal of silence. But because of these rules, our guide kept us outside in the courtyard explaining the different panels of the ceiling, and Michelangelo’s last self-portrait on the wall, found in the skin of Bartholomew. Interesting, yes, but I was more fascinated in what I determined to be the Death Star in the courtyard. (Darth Pope? Who knew? (And please take this in the humor in which it’s intended – I mean no disrespect to the Pope or the Catholic Church.))




We finally were led through 3 or 4 museums and then made it to the Sistine Chapel where our guide gave us about 30 minutes in total to see the Chapel, go to the restroom, and visit the gift shop. I feel like I can’t adequately express the significance of that experience. Sure, millions of people have visited the Sistine Chapel, but now, I’m one of them. And for a small town girl from Missouri, whose family history doesn’t include world travels, it’s pretty awesome. I’m so grateful that I got to be a part of this trip.
After the Chapel, we went to St. Peter’s Basilica, which is the largest church in the world. We saw where St. Peter is buried, and stumbled upon the caskets of a few other previous popes. That was just a little disconcerting. But the church was gorgeous, huge, and definitely something to be experienced. We also saw Michelangelo’s Pieta sculpture. Photos and stories just can’t do it justice. We came out into St. Peter’s Square after our tour.







We then were released for free time, and treated Mauro to lunch and did a little shopping in the gift shops. I was looking for a tea towel from Rome (which I’ve turned others that Robert got in England when he lived there) into banners that line the walls of our basement, and we’re doing the same with the ones we picked up in Italy. But all the ones we have are vertical, and they only had horizontal ones from Rome. I picked up the third one that was horizontal and exclaimed, “For Pete’s sake!” to which Robert said, “I think you should be careful about saying that, especially since we just left St. Peter’s church,” to which I then said, “Oh, crap!” LOL I got so tickled and the Italian guy working the shop was trying to understand what was so funny, and I couldn’t make him understand, and it just got worse and worse! I was pretty embarrassed then.
Because Mauro is from Rome, he offered to take us on an additional walking tour of the city to see his favorite sites, and we took him up on that. He took us back to the Trevi Fountain (for those who weren’t on the bus the previous night), and to the Spanish Steps. We also got to go to the Pantheon, but unfortunately, it closed temporarily right before we got there and wasn’t reopening until 6 p.m., so we didn’t get to go inside. We did have another gelato break, though, and I laughed when I saw my boss’ uncle eating a vanilla cone from McDonald’s. With all the gelato around, that was just so wrong on so many levels.



Check this guy out – he’s a street artist – this is not a statue!

As we headed back to the hotel, we tipped Francisco to drop us off near the American Embassy, which was very close to the Hard Rock Cafe. I had to get another shirt, you know? And, we had another secret mission to attend to, which was also nearby, and we put Ginger the Navigator to the test. We arrived at our destination at 5:55 p.m., walked in, and the girl said they were closing in 5 minutes! I said, “no problem,” and got what I’d come after, paid, and we left. My feet and ankles were killing me by then, but I was so thankful that we’d made it on time. We managed to get back to the hotel to drop off our packages, then went to a restaurant Mauro recommended called La Gallina Bianca (“The White Hen”). All of his recommendations had been stellar to this point, but this place was somewhat of a disappointment. I think we were all too tired to really care, though.
Back to the hotel where we had to repack and get everything ready to have our luggage outside our doors by 4 a.m. and to board the bus at 4:45 a.m. I wasn’t looking forward to the 9 hour flight from Atlantla to Milan, but after walking an average of 10 miles a day, I was really looking forward to the 10 1/2 hour flight from Rome back to Atlanta. A whole 10 1/2 hours of no walking, and no standing – that sounded like heaven to me.