Italy Day 1

Ok, I know this has been a long-time coming but I'm finally getting around to posting stuff from our days in Italy!

We arrived in Rome around 9am and headed straight to the apartment. This loft apartment is on a tiny little street, close to the subway, and has A/C! Yay! It was super warm in Rome so the A/C was a blessing.

After settling in we headed towards the Vatican. Did you know...the Vatican is its own country?! They have their own currency and postal service as well. It is the world's smallest country resulting in the world's richest per-square-mile country as well.

We ate lunch at a small (tourist trap) place near the Vatican. Yup, we had pizza. It was ok, nothing to write home about though. We went to Piazza di San Pietro and people watched for a bit before our tour for the day. While waiting I had my first (of many) gelato. I love my ice cream so it was a quest to find the best gelato in Rome! This one was from a street vendor so not so great, but still ice cream (and on a hot day---REFRESHING ice cream).

We talked to the Swiss Guards nearby (why in the WORLD do they wear those ridiculous outfits) to make sure we were in the right spot and we were but about 15 minutes to early...so more waiting around. Finally we were granted access to the Vatican.

We signed up for a Scavi Tour, which is a tour of the excavation work being done beneath St. Peter's Basilica. It is quite a privilege to attend one of the scavi tours...I heard about it on a travel forum and signed up immediately. The conservation of this site is of utmost importance and only ten tours are granted per day with approximately 12 people per tour. That's only 120 people compared to the 20,000 visitors in St Peter's Basilica (above our heads during the tour) per day. One of the ways to help preserve the amazing sites is to keep the humidity at 95%...we fully expected it to be cool during this tour since we were below ground...didn't know about the humidity until we got there! Holy humid!

A bit of history:

After being crucified, Peter was buried on a hillside necropolis, a city of the dead. It was a place, fashioned to look like a city in miniature, where wealthy pagan families entombed their dead in houses where they could continue their new lives. Emperor Constantine eventually became a Christian, and in the 4th century, ordered the construction of a church over the tomb of St. Peter. The church also covered the other mausoleums in the ancient cemetery. In the 16th century, the present basilica was built on the site. As the centuries passed, so did the memory of the necropolis below. In 1939 workers began digging a tomb for Pope Pius XI and broke through a wall beneath the church thus discovering the necropolis. Pope Pius XII ordered the excavation of the necropolis, but kept the work secret in case St. Peter's tomb was not found. Since the necropolis acts as the foundation of St. Peter's Basilica, the entire area cannot be uncovered without the possibility of having the Basilica collapse. Work continued for a decade and on December 23, 1950, Pius XII announced the discovery of St. Peter's tomb. On June 26, 1968, Pope Paul VI announced that the remains of St. Peter had also been discovered. Amazingly, all bones are present, except his feat. You may know that Peter was crucified upside down. To remove him from the cross they would have cut his feet off, hence the missing feet.

We had a knowledgeable and very thorough guide for our tour. So thorough that the group behind us caught up a few times. :) We were admitted entry through a thick glass door only after her handprint was verified (very secure areas). The tour is not for claustrophobic people as the ceilings are low, walkways are narrow and it's very dimly lit. The lanes are lined with Christian and pagan mausoleums. Mostly pagan of course since Christianity was outlawed for quite some time. However, there was one mausoleum that contains some of the earliest signs of Christianity, and are in fact a bit hidden as Christianity was still outlawed at the time of their death. It is just amazing that the hill we were walking on was Vatican Hill...from 1,900 years ago.

Of course the highlight of the tour was Peter's tomb. There is a "graffiti wall" which has Greek letters for "Peter" and fragments of words that may have said "is here", "within", or "in peace", along with a second tomb built by Constantine as a more fitting resting place for Peter. The other side of the graffiti wall contains a hole with two plastic boxes containing the bones found on site and are placed at the exact location that they were found.

After the tour we went back to the apartment to cool off for a bit before heading out for dinner. We ate at a restaurant close to our apartment. I ordered spaghetti bolognese and Jim had ravioli. We seemed to wait quite a while for our food but our waiter brought some eggplant out while we were waiting. Jim said it was a bit spicy but good (I did not try it). Our meals were quite good and it was nice dining "al fresco" (outside) as it had cooled off quite a bit. I wasn't able to finish my meal and the waiter was just sure I didn't like it and offered to bring me something else. I kept saying no and he ended up bringing us some bruschetta as well. The bruschetta was DELIGHTFUL! We weren't quite sure how much our meal was going to be---or if the waiter was going to charge us for all the extra food that we didn't order, but he didn't. It was quite cheap, less than 30 euros I think. Not too shabby!

We walked around, did some shopping, etc. before heading to the apartment for a good night's sleep!