The 5:00 AM alarm came early this morning, it was the earliest we had gotten up the entire trip. But as they say, “the early pilgrim gets the good Papal audience seats.”
We showered and got dressed for our adventure today. There is a dress code to attend the Papal audience, no shorts for men or women, and covered shoulders. Dresses need to be at least knee length.
We were too early for our breakfast rolls from the hotel to be delivered outside the door, but we had purchased some yogurt at the grocery for this morning knowing we would be leaving earlier than the breakfast delivery. We had the yogurt and some left over rolls from yesterday, and I had a small cup of coffee to get me going. Stephanie had her usual Diet Coke.
We gathered up our gear, and made sure we had our tickets for the audience and for the Metro. We could take water, but it could not be in our metal bottles, so we refilled the two small plastic bottles we bought at lunch yesterday. It was a little chilly this morning, about 53 degrees F, so we wore extra layers for the cooler temperatures.
We left the hotel room promptly at 6:30 AM for the walk to the Repubblica Metro Station for our ride over to St. Peter’s. The total travel time there is about thirty minutes with the walking distances on both ends of the metro ride. It was barely getting light outside as we walked to the Metro stop.
We had read that the line for security at the entrance nearest the Metro is one of the longest since a lot of people use the Metro to get here for the audience. Our plan had been to get here early to avoid some of the lines, but apparently that was also the plan of many others besides ourselves, the line was already very long when we got near St. Peter’s Square. We knew there were two other entrance points, so we headed around the square to the middle entrance. It was full with groups of school age kids, and was even longer, or seemed so. We headed to our third option, the mirror image of the entrance nearest the metro, but on the other side of the square. The line here seemed shorter, but it was also wider and less organized. We got at the end of the line and waited for security to open at 7:30 AM.
Apparently, as we have witnessed before, the word “line” is apparently not in the Italian language. There were a few barricades to funnel people in a general direction, but as we waited in what we thought was the end of the line, many other people just started gathering around the barricades, willfully going past us to get closer to the entrance point. There was one group of nuns in front of us who just kept adding to their ranks, the group was at least three times larger than it had started out by the time the security opened. Then there was another school group who’s leader just passed right by what had been the end of the line for many of us, surely setting a good example about waiting your turn….not. It was just a free for all of pushing and shoving once we started moving.
The police tried to set up a canopy for everyone to pass under/through as a pre-screening of bags and purses for prohibited items, such as metal water containers. This seemed to be an after the fact decision because it only started after about half the line was already passed it. We got through that screening and headed to get into one of the several “lines” that were loosely formed to have bags scanned, and for everyone to walk through metal detector. Again, it was a lot of pushing and shoving to get the people through the really small gate for the scanning area. We elected to get on one side of the line, more like a wedge of people than a true line, and there was one tour group by us and their leader seemed to be trying to keep them all together by telling them on their headphone audio system to push forward at periodic times, probably to try and keep people from squeezing in on the outside. She was speaking in another language, but every time she said something into her microphone, there was a lot of pushing forward by her group.
We finally made it through the security, and then things got much better. The nun giving our orientation yesterday had said to try and get seats near a corner of one of the many barricaded off sections of seating. The Pope rides around through the crowds in his special car that drives in the passageways between the barricaded off seating areas and sometimes will pass by a corner more than once as the Pope makes his way around the entire square.
Swiss Guard On Security Detail In The Driving Area Between the Seating Areas
At about 9:00 AM, the security to enter the square closes down, and no one is allowed into the square until the papal drive around is completed. Then, after the Pope heads up to his covered podium near the Basilica, they once again let people into the seating areas.
We found some perimeter seats near the center “roadway” near an intersection. It was pretty empty when we first got our seats, but the area really filled in near the edge of our section as more people arrived. At 9:00 AM, we could see the Pope beginning his ride through the square on the large TV screens. Then the chaos started again. Everyone that had seats away from the edge decided they wanted to be in our space, including a group of four nuns who appeared to possibly be from the Philippines or somewhere in southeast Asia, they were pretty short with darker olive skin.
They literally just pushed their way to the railing, and I could hardly keep my balance. I had to move my chair and recover my backpack, which was now a couple of feet away on the ground. One of the nuns tried to stand on a chair for a better view, but the Swiss Guards made her get down, as well as anyone else in the crowd who tried to stand on chairs, which was prohibited.
It took awhile but the Pope rode by our seats once going in a direction away from us, but returned later and passed right in front of us as the procession turned and headed up the center passageway toward the covered podium area. There was a lady next to us with a small boy, probably about 18 months old. From our orientation, we were told that many times, the Pope will stop and hold or kiss babies as he proceeds through the area. He did stop by us, but for another small child across the way. He then stopped again a little up the way and drank something from a special type of mug with a spout. We were not sure what country the people were from, but he apparently knew what it was and stopped to partake.
Pope Francis got out of the vehicle and walked up the steps to the podium on the entrance of St. Peter’s and began the audience. Finally, everyone returned to their seats giving us our space back. There was a short reading by different priests from the Acts of the Apostles, it was read in about 12 different languages, each by different priests. Then the Pope gave a homily on the reading in Italian, and then the same priests gave a short summary in all of the different languages.
There was some recognition of the many special groups that had traveled here from many different countries, most of them the groups of what appeared to be of high school age youths we had seen in line this morning. Each group cheered as their group name was announced.
There was then the special blessing at the end for everyone and for any items that people had brought to be blessed. The general audience was over, but the Pope met with several special groups that were seated up on the elevated landing on either side of his podium, including a band that had been playing before the audience started. It appeared to be a military band, they had military camo outfits on with green hats with a single feather. We were not sure where they were from.
One of the more interesting aspects of the audience was that recently married couples got to sit up in the special area of the landing if they wore their wedding dresses and tuxes. We saw a lot of brides struggling to get to their special security entrance with long trailing wedding dresses on the dirty cobblestone streets. Stephanie and I commented on maybe them having gotten a more plain dress for attending the event, some of the ones we saw took a couple of people to attend to the long trains on the dress. We were not sure if the Pope actually met with these newly married persons, or if they were just seated in a special area, we were too far away to see for sure, and there were a lot of people up in that area blocking our view.
We headed out, needing to find one of the bathrooms accessible in the square. One was closer up to the main steps of the Basilica, nearer to the post office for the Vatican, but a policeman was not letting anyone go that direction, he was directing them to another bathroom at the entrance to the square. We headed that way but never found where it was, maybe we did not go far enough. We knew where another one was near the street that goes to the Metro Station so we headed over there. The lines were not long for the men’s room, but hardly moved for the women’s room. Stephanie waited in the line for the women, and I got in my line, which only took about five minutes and I was finished and back outside. Stephanie had not moved at all in the women’s line.
This restroom was being used for both men on one side, and women on the other, even though it was normally just a men’s room. There was also a nearby dedicated women’s restroom, and it looked like it was progressing faster even though the line was a little longer than the one Stephanie was already in. She switched lines, but it was just as slow, so we left to walk over to the Pantheon where we knew there was a bathroom in our eatery there. It was either wait in line for 25 minutes or walk for the same amount of time and get to where we knew there was restroom facilities and food.
We started our walk to the Pantheon, which also took us by the Piazza Navona, one of the largest and most popular squares in Rome, with its three fountains. We stopped to enjoy the square for a few minutes before continuing our walk to the Pantheon.
When we arrived at the Antica Salumeria, we got a seat at a large table with three other persons, and ordered some sandwiches and wine for lunch. I had a sandwich with pork meat, and Stephanie had brie cheese, lettuce, and some type of salami. Both were very good. We just sat and relaxed while we finished our liter of red wine. We needed some time to just relax, it had been a hectic morning with all of the waiting and pushing in “lines”, a term which I will use loosely. Now that we knew how the audience worked, we would not be as worried about the long lines and time to get through security, there were plenty of good seats, and the seating area was never really all that full. Only after they started letting people through security the second time, once the Pope completed his ride around the square, did the seating look full.
We really enjoyed the down time, so much more that we ordered another half liter of wine. We were almost done with that when one of the workers, possibly the manager or owner that we had not seen before, asked us to leave our table to sit at a smaller one. There was a family of five that apparently wanted the table for themselves, it was large enough to share, I guess the manager wanted their business, so he asked, really sort of told us, we needed to move. Stephanie was in the bathroom, so I had to get all of our gear and move it to a nearby table. We would have been finished soon anyway, and we had been there for almost two hours, so we thought we had a right to finish at our initial table. It did not make us happy, and we gave a few mean looks to the people who had displaced us. They could have shared the space with us until we left, and it was really a “to go” eating table anyway, not a serviced table other than for wine. You had to go and get your own sandwiches. There were other tables in the back for seated, full service.
We wanted to spend a little time in the Pantheon, so we headed there, and as usual, it was pretty crowded inside. It is an impressive structure, but it is so large and high inside that it is really hard to comprehend that the permanent hole in the top of the dome is so large and that the dome itself is several feet thick at that opening.
After the Pantheon, we walked back over to the Piazza Navona to visit the church there and spend more time walking around. Unfortunately, the church was closed for lunchtime until 3:00 PM, and we did not want to wait for it to open. We headed back to the Pantheon, we needed to take a bathroom break at our eatery before heading over toward the Colosseum and Forum.
It was about a 2 km to walk to the Colosseum, and we went by the Victor Emmanuel II National Monument and took some photos. We then went to a bank ATM that we have used before to get some additional cash, and then headed over to the Forum. We were not going inside, just looking for another restroom break after the long walk. They had facilities, but only on the ticketed side of the Forum. We ended up having to go to a small bar/restaurant and we ordered a two scoop cone of Gelato, which we had wanted to get anyway. With that purchase, we got access to their Toilette. After we left, we walked by a tourist information building about a block away and saw that they had bathrooms inside, just our luck. The gelato was good, and was only Euro 3.00, so not a bad tradeoff. We have paid Euro 2.00 to just use the facilities in train stations many times in the past.
We headed over to the Colosseum to take some photos from the outside, we had no intention of fighting the crowds to get inside. There was a lot of construction on the main street out in front, apparently it is the path for the newest subway line of the Metro. In this area, the subway is being built by trenching, not tunneling, we could see the large crane and scoop to dig the trench sticking up behind the barriers.
After the photos at the Colosseum, we walked to the nearby Metro Station for the short one stop ride to the Cavour metro stop nearest to our hotel. Stephanie could not get her Metro Pass to work properly, it kept saying it was invalid. A man used his pass to let her through, he could tell we were having trouble since I was already on the inside. We were not sure what was wrong, but we would figure that out later. We rode the one stop and got off. We then thought that maybe we should have ridden one more stop to the Termini Station to see if we could trade out her pass for one that worked. We decided to go back into the Cavour station and see if we could go through the gates there, and sure enough her pass worked, and at first mine did not. Apparently, some of the card readers are not reliable, and maybe we were not inserting the card straight into the reader slot, but after I tried again, mine worked too.
With that problem resolved, we walked back to the hotel to rest. We first tried to make reservations on the phone for the La Carbonara Restaurant that we had tried to get into Monday night. They were not taking any additional reservations by phone for tonight, but told us to get there before it opened at 7:00 PM and maybe we could get a table.
Stephanie took a short nap for about an hour and I worked on catching up on the blog. I had gotten a couple of days behind with all we had been doing here in Rome. At 6:30 PM, we got ready to go to dinner and walked to the La Carbonara Restaurant. We just happened to be the first persons in line at about 6:45 PM, and soon the line was quite long behind us. There was a red rope across the entrance outside the main door to keep people from trying to go inside before they opened. An American couple came up and asked if we had reservations. They apparently did not want to wait in line because they had reservations for 7:00 PM that they had gotten the night before when they were told it would be 10:00 PM before they could be seated that night, the standard answer we had gotten a couple of night ago ourselves..
When they finally opened the front door of the restaurant, that couple immediately asked to be let in because “they had a reservation for 7:00 PM”. It was pretty rude, we thought. They did not ask if anyone else in the line had reservations, they just assumed not, and did not want to be shut out of their reservation. I actually said that maybe other people already in line before they got there also had reservations, but they did not hear me. We were able to get a table right off, and we got to sit by that same rude couple. Luckily, there was a column between our table and theirs, and they probably did not even see us.
It was a busy restaurant, and it took us a little bit of time to figure out their extensive wine list and the food choices, there was not a lot of “english” explanation on the different pastas of what they really were, and the types of sauces on them. The wine list was about twenty pages and was divided by regions of Italy. We opted for their bottled Vino della Casa, which is a special wine bottled for the restaurant from the Venice region of Italy. Stephanie ordered a Carbonara with Rigatoni Noodles, and I had a thicker Spaghetti with a white sauce with black pepper. We ordered a basket of bread to go with the pastas, as well as balsamic and olive oil for dipping. The food was all really good, the wine was also good, but not our favorite.
We went ahead and made reservations with our waiter for tomorrow night since we liked the food and need to find a good place we know we can return to in Rome since our previous favorite restaurant is no longer a valid option. We liked this better than the Restaurant TEMA that we ate at Monday night, and the prices were similar. There are many more pasta dishes on the menu to try tomorrow, and we will seek out another wine from their extensive list.
We walked back to the hotel and had a nightcap while we rested and talked about our day. I had some limoncello we had brought from Amalfi and Stephanie had a glass of red wine from a bottle we purchased at the grocery the first day in Rome.
Stephanie turned in and I worked a little on the blog before I started to get too sleepy for my eyes to focus on the keyboard. It had been a long day. We don’t really have any specific plan for tomorrow. After three consecutive days of scheduled early morning activities, we plan to sleep in and figure out something for the day once we get up. Tomorrow is our last full day in Rome, and last day of our trip before we head home on Friday.