If you're going to get religious, Rome is a pretty great place to do it. Scheduling it all though, can be pretty challenging. We discovered that before we ever got to Italy.
Here's the thing, and a great piece of advice for anyone planning a similar trip, if you plan on hitting the most popular of tourism hot spots in Rome, set your schedule months, not weeks, in advance. We were a couple weeks away from our flight to Rome when I went online to make sure we could get into the Vatican museums on the day and time we desired. After a few minutes, I went from surfing to panicking. One website, the Vatican's official site, was completely sold out. We just couldn't go to Rome and not see the Sistine Chapel! When I completed my church mission in late 1983, I toured Italy and Europe with a mission friend. Back then, we purchased a ticket that day and walked right in. No worries, no big crowds, no hassles. 2023 however, was a different story.
I searched for a trusted, verified ticket site and found one. Still, desired ticket times had already been scooped up. Luckily, I found a slot for four "skip the line" tickets for 2 p.m. and purchased them, but we had to be there at 1:45 p.m. to make sure we got in. Also on the schedule that same day was a 10 a.m. appointment at the Rome Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. After all, Ron and I had been missionaries for our church 40 years earlier at a time when neither of us foresaw an LDS temple being built on Italian soil. The fact that it had since happened was a miracle and seeing it was priority number-one.
Taking public transportation from our apartment to the temple was like a 90-minute affair, meaning we would make it to the temple for our almost two-hour appointment, but we wouldn't have near enough time to make it back to the Vatican by 1:45. We needed a mind-calming solution so I had reached out to Roberto, our Rome apartment host, a few days before we left Montana. He had originally offered a driving service to pick us up at the airport the day before. We chose the train instead but now the service looked like the perfect solution. And it was.
Our driver was outside the apartment at 8 a.m. for the drive across Rome. We enjoyed the sites, and especially enjoyed not having to navigate it ourselves, as we made our way to the temple. When we arrived, it was overcast but nice outside. We had enough time to spend more than 30 minutes on the temple grounds taking photos and soaking it all in. We wandered in and made a quick loop around the visitor's center before heading across the way to the temple.
Once inside, we ran into a handful of other Americans. They asked where we were from. When we said Montana, the woman said, "My daughter lives there."
"Where?" we asked.
"Florence."
"What's her name?"
"I love her!" said Lori, after learning her name.
Turns out we are friends and used to go to church with her and her family when we lived in Lolo and the were in Florence. We went fishing together too. So, how about that? You go halfway around the world and run into someone who's family with someone else in your own backyard.
Being in the temple was so cool. I've been in others but this one was in Italy and it wasn't in English. The proceedings were in Italian. That really made our session both meaningful and memorable. For those not familiar with LDS temples, it's a place to escape the hustle and bustle, receive instruction, feel peace and learn more about Jesus Christ and God. The other thing that was really neat is I understood just about every word spoken in Italian without even thinking hard about it.
Afterwards, we had a bit more time before we had to had back into town so we caught up with a couple of young female missionaries who gave us a tour, told about the Christus statue. The marble came from the same source as what Michelangelo used to create his statue of David. Each of the Twelve Apostles that stood behind displayed symbolism of different kinds. Needless to say, visiting the Rome Temple was a one of the highlights of our entire trip.
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| A model of the Rome Temple's interior |
With our driver standing by, we climbed on board and headed back toward the Vatican. We arrived with more than enough time to find a bite to eat. For me, that meant a flatbread ham and cheese panino or sandwich. Unlike Americans, Italians don't put mayonnaise or mustard or any condiments on their sandwiches. Shoot, disrespecting the bread, meat and cheese that way would be blasphemy to them. To make my lunch even better, I was really excited to finally get my hands on orange Fanta. Now, this isn't your syrupy American orange soda. Italy's version of Fanta is lighter in color because it's 12 percent orange juice and exceptionally tasty.
As we finished up eating on the steps of street just across the way from the Vatican, the rain began to fall. By the time we finished, it was coming down pretty good. Because we purchased "skip the line" tickets, we walked past hundreds upon hundreds of folks huddled under umbrellas in an eternally long line and walked right in.
How do you describe the Vatican Museums? There are 24 rooms or galleries that feature 20,000 pieces of art including paintings, sculptures, murals, mosaics, carvings, pottery, tapestries, bronzes, ceramics, papyruses, architecture, artifacts and much more gathered by the Catholic Church and its popes over centuries. Featured artists are Michelangelo, Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent van Gogh, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso and scores of others. It's funny when you see something in person that your brain instantly hearkens back to when you first learned about it in a required junior college fine arts class from more than four decades earlier. (Shocking reality realization: I really did learn and remember something from that class!)
As we made our way down the crowded corridors, and I mean really, really crowded, I felt like I could pick my feet off the ground and the sheer mass of humanity would carry me forward.
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| Yep, Ron and I both lived right there back in the early 1980s |
There was so much to see that it was overwhelming. The highlight was Michelangelo's masterpiece that is the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Built in the mid to late-1400s, it took him four years to paint the ceiling that features the creation of the world including the famous finger of God and a series of other biblical recreations. And then Raphael got the call to to design a series of tapestries to hang on the lower walls.
After three hours or so soaking up religious history, we headed outside to St. Peter's Square. Our hope was to walk through St. Peter's Basilica but there were a couple of deterrents. First, the line to get in looked to be about 500 yards of people long, and it wasn't single file either. And second, the rain was still coming down at a pretty good clip. As we gathered and stood under a covered archway to talk about what to do next, something narrowly missed hitting me in the face and landed right on the big toe portion of my left shoe. It wasn't a large rain drop either but it was an oh so close miss. I was poop bombed by one of those notorious Vatican pigeons. (Oh, the need for a BB gun!)
Back to our St. Peter's discussion, I'd visited the massive church back in 1983 so it didn't matter if I skipped it. Ron, April, Lori and I weighed in and we decided we would see many more churches over the next couple of weeks so the most important thing to do was to leave Vatican City and do what? Find some gelato, of course!
As Lori so astutely pointed out (several times, in fact, over our time in Italy), "any time of day is a good time for gelato." (Man, so glad I married that girl!) Once inside a gelateria, we put in our orders. I went with a cup of lemon. Smooth, creamy, lemony and flavorful with a bit of a tart bite to it. Though appreciated, my quest for the best lemon gelato in central and southern Italy would continue.
Just walking the streets of Rome brought back so many memories of my time as a young missionary in Italy. Close to our apartment was Casa del Pane. That, in and of itself, screams Italian. You just don't have businesses like this "House of Bread" in the U.S. True, there are bakeries but they don't make bread the way the way Italians make bread, especially with that hard yet deliciously chewy crust you have to clamp down hard on with your teeth and then tear or rip it away with your hand. You just can't beat it.
Something else that's a common site are exterior apartment call boxes, located immediately next to heavy doors designed to keep the outside world from entering. This brought back some intimidating and sometimes comedic memories.
You see, the majority of Italians live in apartment buildings in cities. To get in, you either need a key to the door or you buzz someone you know and they let you in or you buzz someone you don't know and and you try to talk your way in. When we were missionaries trying to spread the good word, we would often stand outside a given building, push a random button and then try to have a brief conversation about the gospel. It would go something like this (but of course the conversations were in Italian) after pushing a button:
"Hi, my name is Elder Holyoak, and I'm a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. How are you doing?"
At this point, the conversion would usually go one of two ways. Either, the person on the other end would say something like, "I'm doing alright. How are you?" And then we would talk a little more and they would either hit the enter button and tell us to come up to whatever floor where we would enter and talk some more. Or they would say, "C'e nesunno," meaning "nobody is here." That one always cracked me up and it seemed to happen all the time.
"Wait, nobody's there?"
"Si, c'e nesunno."
"If nobody is there, then to whom am I speaking?"
At that point, it usually became silent on the other end. Ah yes, good times from the old days of being a missionary.
Back to our trip. With gelato found and savored, yet quickly gobbled up, it was time to get some real food. We wandered around scouting places to eat before settling on a restaurant. Above our table on the wall was the phrase, "Uno non puo pensae bene, amare bene, dormire bend, se non ha mangiato bene," or in other words, "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not eaten well." So true!
So we ordered and ate. Ate well, that is. For an appetizer, we ordered prosciutto crudo, or seasoned and dry-aged ham, with mozzarella. The previous night, Lori ordered the popular Roman dish cacio e pepe, which translated means "cheese and pepper." To be more specific, spaghetti with pecorino cheese, sauce and pepper. I had a bite of hers and now needed a plate of my own. So simple, yet so flavorful and filling.
Happily full, we headed back to the apartment to pack our bags and get some sleep for our early morning train ride. For whatever reason, our upper bathroom toilet overflowed a couple of times so we had to clean it up. Ick! Because it was now "out of order," I found myself wandering down the obstacle course that was our apartment to use the lower bathroom sometime in the middle of the night. I was careful to not step through any of the architecturally creative holes. I didn't. Instead, I didn't notice a step that was there and crashed into the kitchen wall. "You okay?" came an immediate response across the way from Ron and April. "Yeah, just missed a step."
Oh well, the next day would bring with it new adventures as we headed south to the Puglia.
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