Italy: Day 3 - Getting Religious in Rome

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 they 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 and 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.

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. 

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 and consumed, 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 bene, 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.

Italy: Day 2 - An Emotional Awakening in Rome

Lean my head to the left. Lean it to the right. Maybe resting against the side of the plane would work? Nope, make no doubt about, trying to sleep on the airplane was a complete no go. I was pretty thick-headed just waiting for time to pass and for the sun finally to pop above the horizon and light the world below.

When it finally happened, I looked down on the Tyrrhenian Sea and then land ahoy! What happened next was the first of many unexpected yet personal surprises over the next two weeks. As I looked down on Italy's mainland I had conflicting positive emotions. On one hand, I felt the giddiness that a little kid feels on Christmas morning. The dreariness of a sleepless night was suddenly and totally gone. I was so excited. It was really happening. I was returning to Italy. At the same time, I had a lump in my throat. Even though four decades has passed since I lived in Italy, it was an emotional awakening of sorts. I was about to land and set foot in a country that I dearly loved, and didn't realize how much I dearly missed.

Because we traveled only with backpacks, there was no need to wait at baggage claim with most everyone else on board. Exiting the Rome airport was as quick as walking through the security station, getting our passports stamped, stopping at the ATM to get a couple hundred euros and crossing the street to the train station. We purchased tickets for the 40-minute ride to our first planned stop of Trastevere, (pronounced tras-TAY'-vehr-ay, which we both butchered time and time again), a picturesque, popular neighborhood of Rome dating back centuries.

I was a little nervous that we might overshoot our stop but we had no issues. Once the doors opened, it was absolutely refreshing to get out and enjoy short-sleeve weather and soak up the sunshine. Shoot, we still had snow on the ground back in Montana. It was even better to soak in Rome's culture and history. We walked about 20 minutes toward the Tiber River, found some steps down to a riverside pathway and walked and talked as we enjoyed the beauty of it all. Our first stop was Ponte Fabricio, the oldest bridge in Rome, dating back to 62 BC. 

As we ascended to the street above, we enjoyed our first Italian treat at a small roadside business. "Facciamo una granita limone e una granita fragola, per favore." (Let's do a lemon granita and a strawberry granita, please.) It was my first chance to speak Italian in decades and I must've somewhat made sense because that's what they gave me. And while mine was lemony and cold and refreshing, it was not what I remembered. It was more like a store-bought slush with larger ice granules. I would continue my quest. But hey, we were in Italy and I loved it. 

We continued our self-guided walking tour through Trastevere with a visit to the Basilica di Santa Maria, one of the oldest churches in Rome and one built to Mary, mother of Jesus. Its basic floor plan and structure date back to the third century. It also gave us a nice bird's eye view of the city. 

We climbed a little higher in elevation to the Church of San Pietro in Montorio, the supposed site of the Apostle Peter's crucifixion. Decorated by art throughout, the current church was built on the site of an earlier 9th century church. 

In its courtyard is a commemorative shrine to Peter. Roman Emperor Nero ordered Peter's execution. According to the church, the apostle felt unworthy to die in the same manner as Jesus Christ so he requested to be crucified upside down. 

I took a photo of an image by a Spanish artist, Jose di Ribera, with his take of what Peter's crucifixion could have looked like.

Check-in time at our Airbnb was between 3 and 4 p.m. so to beat the clock, Lori used an app to summon a taxi that picked us up in Trastevere. As we weaved our way through town, we passed a heavily fortified compound with barbed wire along the top of it.

Sitting in the front seat next to the driver I said," What is that? A prison?"

"No, that's the Russian Embassy," he responded.

"Same difference," I said.

He chuckled. That little back and forth gave me the confidence that I could indeed somewhat remember this language, and have an understandable conversation in Italian. He pulled up and dropped us off in front of our rented dwelling for the night, Antico Convento (Ancient Convent). Advertised as a "stone's throw away from St. Peter's Dome and the Vatican, the apartment is part of an 18th century monastery." Yep, it's where the nuns used to live back in the day.

Anyway, we were greeted by Roberto, our gracious host and the apartment's owner. He gave us an incredibly thorough tour of the place with a detailed explanation of the building's history and the architect who designed it. (And by "thorough," I mean it was like 30 minutes worth.) Still, it was pretty amazing. I mean, the space utilization was impressive and the rock work as really cool but the design was a little over-the-top. Or should I just say a little sketchy, because there were several places once you climbed the steps where you could actually step through and either fall to the floor below or have your leg or other body part fall through until the rest of your body hit the floor. One of those potential holes was right next to my side of the bed so I placed my backpack over it so that wouldn't happen to me, especially if I got up while it was still dark outside. I would be terrified if I had a toddler to watch in that place.

Roberto spoke English but it was my first real opportunity to speak Italian. It went alright. I mean, I picked up quite a bit of it but it's almost like I had to wait for my brain to translate what he said into English, then have my brain say, "Okay, got it," and then I'd have to remember the vocabulary, conjugate the verb and respond. Still, he was super friendly and informative. 

Roberto, my first new friend back in Italy

It wasn't long after Roberto departed and Lori and I started to unpack some of our belongings when I got a text from Ron. He and April arrived and were right out front. It was so great to see them! Ron and I were in Italy together, again! And on April 12, 2023, it was exactly 40 years to the day since we first met as young missionaries on April 12, 1983. But it was so much better this time since we had our wives with us. We had seen Ron and April briefly four years earlier before COVID but before that it had been since 1984 when he moved out of our BYU apartment where we were roommates to get married. Ron and April are like those friends where you can be apart for quite some time, even years, and yet when you're get back together, it's just like you hadn't been apart. Just great, fun-loving solid people, good friends and, as we would find out, the perfect travel companions.

After chatting it up, talking about their day in Paris before flying to Rome, deciding which couple would sleep in the bed up top and the other on the sofa bed, we looked ahead to, drum roll please...dinner! Yes please! We messaged Roberto to ask for suggestions of nearby restaurants and he said he'd forward some. But we were in Italy. We weren't going to wait around for a text when we could be out on the streets soaking it all in.

The thing is, where some things change over time, other things just plain don't. And it Italy, nothing had changed in relation to the daily when-to-eat schedule. Except for service-oriented businesses in the heart of tourism zones, the nation still shuts down on weekdays from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., just like 40 years ago, which meant restaurants don't open until 7:30 or 8 or even 8:30 p.m. Yes indeed, we certainly weren't in America anymore. 

So, sometimes using Google to see "restaurants near me" or just walking from one block to the next, we looked for and found different places to eat, glanced at their posted menus and looked for more. Eventually, enough time passed and we found a menu to our liking so we walked into Papa Rex Ristorante. Of course, it wasn't nearly as old as the nearby Vatican but it had been around 32 years so that longevity worked for us. We sorted through the 17 pages of items: hors-d'ourves, seafood hor-d'ourves, first course-pasta, first course-fish, second plate-meat, second plate-fish, pizza, desert and then pages of wines and other liquors. (And we saw menus of this length everywhere we went.) Yeah, this most definitely wasn't America either. We bucked the four-course trend. Lori ordered a pizza, prosciutto crudo di montagna (mountain ham), as an "appetizer" for all of us. I ordered cannelloni off first course as my main course. Ron and I ordered aqua frizzante (fizzy water) while Lori and April went with aqua naturale. 

Now THAT's the type of "appetizer" to kick off an Italian meal

Cannelloni? Yes, please! 

It was so much fun to eat, share old mission stories, eat, laugh, share more stories and eat. Man, it was so great being back in Italy. After dinner we had one thing on our collective minds - gelato! And that we did. Now, there's a definite difference between gelato and ice cream. Ice cream has more cream than milk whereas gelato has more milk than cream. Ice cream also includes egg yokes while gelato usually doesn't. The bottom line is gelato is creamier and tastier. The servings are also relatively small, leaving the desire for more. We found a gelateria. I knew what I wanted - lemon! You see, a good lemon gelato makes the face pucker. I ordered half lemon and half strawberry. It was smooth. It was creamy. It made me pucker! It was Italian gelato!   

By now, it was starting to get dark and it was late. With the Vatican so close, we wandered over to St. Peter's Square. Covering 109 acres, Vatican City is the smallest nation in the world. It was so neat to visit such an iconic and historic location, and to do so without the mass of humanity that's usually there. Off and on drizzly rain earlier in the evening had something to do with that but the showers held off as we walked and talked. Lori pulled out a couple of pennies she brought with her and tossed them into a fountain. Construction began on St. Peter's Basilica in 1506 AD. 

We made our way to the far end of the Vatican to Castel Sant'Angelo. Commissioned by Roman Emperor Hadrian as a mausoleum for himself and his family, construction finished in 139 AD. Popes later converted it to a military fortress that even featured a covered, fortified corridor connecting it to St. Peter's Basilica, a 10-minute 820-yard walk. The castle later became a residence, prison and is now a museum.

One of the most amazing things about this first day in Italy was the expected heavy dose of jet lag never really hit me. True, we hit the ground running that morning but I thought it would kick in some time. But it really didn't. Forza!