The Vatican!!!

venerdi, 3 giugno 2016

It took us eleven days, but we finally made it to the Vatican!! We made up for how long it took to come by spending quite a bit of time there today.

When we were on the bus this morning en route to the Vatican, we weren't sure exactly where the stop would be, but fortunately there were a few priests on the bus that were also getting off at the same spot. Once we were off the bus, we saw several more priests along with many other people heading in one direction, so we figured we must be going the right way. This seems to be a recurring theme: find the Catholics and they will lead us where we need to be!

Eventually, we made it to St. Peter's Square and got through security in time to get some pretty good seats for mass. We certainly weren't in the front row or anything, but it really filled up with a ton of people behind us that arrived later.

Arriving in St. Peter's Square

Waiting for mass to start!!

Mass itself was absolutely beautiful! Today is the Solemnity of the Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, so it was a wonderful day to be able to celebrate by going to mass! Fortunately, at papal masses, they hand out these handy dandy little books that have all of the words, so we can at least follow along when we don't understand the Italian. The second reading was in English though, so that was nice! Also, shoutout to Fr. Tom, who has us well acquainted with the Latin mass parts and even the tune for the Missa de Angelis!

Very handy little booklet!

After mass, we discovered that we were trapped by Pope Francis. By that, I mean we were blocked in the section that we were in as they were keeping the route clear for him to go by in the good ol' popemobile once he was done greeting many people. One thing that I have learned to be true from papal events, both Philly and today, is that they seem to be designed to help people practice the virtue of patience as there is a lot of waiting involved!

Papa Francesco!!

After mass, we still had a few hours until the Scavi tour that we had tickets for at three. Once we finally figured out where we would need to go for that later in the afternoon, we just wandered around and visited some little shops nearby.

Shortly before our tour, we checked with the Swiss Guards to make sure that we were in the correct place. There is also a canonization that will take place on Sunday, so we asked where we could get tickets for that, and they were super friendly and had some tickets on hand that they were able to give us for the canonization mass!

Kelsey's birthday gift, courtesy of the Swiss Guards!

(Also, my parents commented the other day on how big Kelsey's mouth is in some of our pictures, so we took that as a challenge)

Although we were not able to take pictures while on the Scavi Tour, I will explain a bit of what it it. Basically, it is a guided tour in the excavations under St. Peter's Basilica. We made reservations a few months back since I had heard that it can be rather difficult to get them. The tour included seeing many archaeological sites with tombs of both pagan Romans and early Christians, but the main highlight of the tour was seeing the remains of the tomb of St. Peter and being able to pray for a few minutes in front of what is left of the bones of St. Peter. It was such an incredible experience!

The tour ended just underneath the Basilica, so we were able to head directly into St. Peter's from there. It is amazing how big it really is and it was absolutely beautiful! We were also quite pleased to find the prayer chapel in which the Blessed Sacrament is present so we prayed there for a while before leaving and heading back to our apartment.

We seem to be learning more and more about public transportation the hard way. As we tried to find our way back to the apartment using the buses, we managed to get all the way across the city, only to find out that that is where the bus route ends and restarts, so we ended up waiting quite a while for the next bus to come through that would actually take us where we were trying to go. Our supposedly short ride back took much longer, especially when we just wanted to get back so we could relax and find food.

Once we finally returned, ravenously hungry, we had some peach tea (affectionately known as peach drink) and leftovers to hold us over until dinner. We ran to the store to pick up a couple of things in preparation for Kelsey's birthday on Sunday, then returned back to make a scrumptious chicken dinner for ourselves tonight! Fortunately, Kelsey managed to not start anything on fire again, so we didn't end up with a burnt towel. On the downside, we did discover something else that was burnt, and that was us. When we left this morning, it was overcast and rainy, so we didn't think to put sunscreen on. That was a bit of a mistake as we ended up with a bit of a sunburn. It does show that we were hardcore Catholic-ing (can I make that a word?) today because our sunburn left lighter marks where our medals and scapulars were. Oops!

All set for Kelsey's birthday!!

Well, time to get some rest to prepare for our return to the Vatican to visit the museums there tomorrow!

Ananas e torta mix!

Allison and Kelsey