We head to breakfast at our Rome hotel for the first time and are pleased the large breakfast buffet. We can't sit long, because we were recommended to get to the Vatican 2 hours before the pope's 10:30 appearance so we can get a good seat. It is just a short metro ride away, but then a 10 minute walk to the Vatican entrance. It's pretty crazy to think of how small this 'country' is, despite being so powerful. We make it through security and find a seat near an 'intersection' that is heavily guarded with Vatican security. In the crowd, they have several lanes set up that I assume is for the pope mobile to drive through. We write our family's postcards while we wait for him, in the hot sun. At about 10:35, he emerges from around the left edge of St. Peter's riding atop his pope mobile - no glass bubble though. He rides in style - an interesting Mercedes vehicle. He drives around the lanes several times including going within 15 feet of our seats twice - it was awesome to be that close to the most powerful catholic leader in the world. After driving around for a few minutes, the pope mobile drives him right up the steps to the stage and drops him off. For the next hour or so, they alternate having a priest from US, Germany, France, Italy and a Spanish speaking country, get up to recognize any groups from a country that speaks their language and then a short prayer. The pope spoke between several of them, showing off the many different languages he can speak fluently. He opened with a lengthy speech in Italian that Laura and I have no idea what he was saying. Laura had to go to the bathroom, so we started over to the bathroom during one of the foreign priest's talks. They ended the ceremony with singing the Our Father in Latin - I thought I would remember it better from high school Latin, but it didn't even seem all that familiar! Near the bathrooms was where he had originally entered, so we walked up there and waited for him to leave - he came within a few feet of us again - this time I got it on video!
We are starving by this point, so we head to lunch, just outside the Vatican. We realized earlier that we didn't have the addresses with us to send the postcards to, so we would have to come back later to mail them from the Vatican (so they'd have the Vatican postmark). We then head to the Vatican museum for our 1:30 reservation. It is a mad house getting through the swarms of people in guided tours. We just used Rick Steve's book's description for our trek through, until we got to the highlights - first Raphael's rooms and then the Sistine chapel! It was truly remarkable to see in person. After admiring all the different scenes, we head next door to St. Peters. Huge is all i can say. I don't think pictures will ever do it justice for how massive that church is. They said that more than 60,000 people can fit into the 6 acres inside - ridiculous. We try to buy holy water there, but it is 3:30 and they don't offer it for sale again until 4:00. Laura heads to the bathroom outside, while Mark waits inside for 4:00. They give the holy water away for free, but you need to buy the 3.5 euro viles from the gift shop, if you didn't have your own with you - cash only. I only have 18.5 euros and wanted 7 viles, so add that to what I need to do in the return visit. We head back to the hotel and find all the addresses, then mark heads back to the Vatican to mail them and buy the extra 2 viles of holy water. after getting back and a short rest, we head to dinner in the Travestere neighborhood and then home for bed after a long day...
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