Eurotrip 2023: Day 5 – Vatican City and Vatican Museums

Day 5 and I was beginning to think there was already a pattern to the weather.😅 Much to our chagrin, it was raining even before I woke up.

It was unfortunate as we’d be spending most of morning at St. Peter’s Square for the Papal Audience.

I dressed appropriately, not only because we are to enter St. Peter’s Basilica, but also we’d have to possibly stand in the rain for hours.

We left our AirBnB at around 8:00 am, as I expected the travel to the Vatican City would not take more than 15 minutes.

We booked a FreeNow car until Via della Conciliazione, as the car could not technically enter the Vatican City.

From there, we walked a bit before reaching the the security check at St. Peter’s Square. The guard on duty pulled out some bananas from Mama’s bags, and just chuckled a bit at that random fruit.

Perhaps it was the weather, but there were more chair than people during the audience. There were attendees from around the world, some of which even brought their flags with them.

There was also a big group from a university in Spain, which Pope Francis addressed in Spanish. The audience was primarily in Italian and Latin, and I did my best to translate it for them, until I eventually gave up.

The Latin part was particularly hard as I had to walk my way back from the little Latin I could understand from my conversational Italian, translated to English then to Filipino.🤣

Back in early 2015, Mama even went alone to UST just to attend a mass presided by Pope Francis during his visit in Manila. Then in Rome, it was her and Papa’s turn to be part of an audience in the home of the Roman Catholic faith.

While sitting and staring at the Vatican obelisk, the colonnade and St. Peter’s dome, I suddenly remembered in the final interview of the job I was applying for a question on why I studied Italian.

I answered: “It was a dream of my mother to visit Rome and the Vatican City; and one day, I’ll make that happen so I can be their personal interpreter and tour guide”. And I finally made it happen for both of them.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I did not realize it was already 10:00 am, and the Papal Audience came to a close.

The next in our agenda was to go inside St. Peter’s Basilica. It may not the best itinerary to squeeze that visit after the Papal Audience as majority of the attendees had likewise wanted to enter the basilica. That was on top of the other tourists we arrived one by one after the audience.

Although the crowd began forming a line to enter St. Peter’s Basilica, it took around 30 more minutes before the activities in the stage finally concluded. There were a couple of newlyweds who appeared to have sought the blessings of the Pope himself.

The line was long and slowly moving. We finally entered the basilica at exactly 11:33 pm, which meant we had little time to look around.

Still, as soon as we entered, we were not prepared of how grand the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica was.

Similar to Santa Maria Maggiore and Laterano, the gold coffered ceiling was out of this world. At that point of the trip, we have already visited 3 out of the 4 papal basilicas in Rome, leaving out the Basilica San Paolo fuori le mura.

Given the tight schedule (we have Musei Vaticani scheduled at 1:30 pm), I had to remind everyone we only have 1 hour.

We managed to have a look around the floor until Bernini’s baldachin, as well as the area where all the previous popes names were engraved.

There was also a replica of Raphael’s ‘La Trasfigurazione’, the original of which we’d have to see later on at the Vatican Museums.

Perhaps the most interesting artwork present inside St. Peter’s Basilica was Michelangelo’s ‘La Pietà’, which needed to further introduction, except it was his only signed artwork done when he was only 24.

It was to the right of the basilica, but we purposely viewed it last before heading out.

It was at a considerable distance, enclosed in a bullet proof glass for years, after a Hungarian man deliberately hammered it down back in 1972.

Pictures don’t do it justice. It was stunning even behind that glass.

At 12:26 pm, we stepped out of St. Peter’s Basilica, which meant we had less than an hour to look for a place to eat lunch and then walk to the entrance of the Vatican Museums.

We had no choice as we ended up with this tourist trap at Via Porta di Angelica. I should have checked Google Reviews before even considering this resto.

It is was BAD. The waiter sat us in, tried to sweet talk us by addressing us as kabayans, and made it appear like we got the best seats in the house.

It was obvious something was up, but we just needed to eat quickly and not miss our entry to the Vatican Museums.

Contrary to some Google Reviews, the food was not bad at all. On the other hand, the same thing could not be said of the price of the food, or worse the waiter who tried to hustle us into giving a tip.

It was obvious we were on a hurry an aside from me giving him €5, he even had a last minute swipe of my card as it did not allegedly work the first time. (I only saw it days after that he swiped €10 in my card. What a scam and left a bad taste in our mouths, pun intended).

As soon as we got out of the claws of the waiter, I had to run the whole length of the walls until the entrance to the Musei Vaticani just to make sure I could inform the staff we’d be there.

There was already a huge crowd outside, and I had to explain/plead to the staff half panting and showing our tickets if we could wait for our party as they were arriving:

– Mi dispiace. I miei genitori non possono camminare rapidamente. Possiamo aspettare in 10 minuti? 

🤣

And he fortunately agreed. I was not sure of any grace period, but I’d rather ask than lose our chance to enter.

As soon as they arrived with their lunch barely digested, I flashed our tickets and we were allowed entry.

In the first 20 minutes inside the Vatican Museums, we were all sweaty. I had to put a towel on my back as I tried to calm myself down. I had a date with Raphael after all.

Our first stop was the Vatican’s art gallery: the Pinacoteca. While most visitors upon entry was whisked away by their tour groups to the courtyard and almost directly to the Sistine Chapel, we immediately turned right to visit the gallery.

I was most excited to see Room VIII, which contained three Raphael works, especially ‘Il Trasfigurazione‘, which was Raphael’s last known work.

This was a very special artwork for me. In one of our Italian classes, the professor got mad with us as we had been asked the name of this painting by Rafaello. As it looked like Jesus rising from, we kept on answering variations of the resurrection and ascension.

Spot the Caravaggio

We were less than 10 in the class and we spent the whole duration trying to give our answers. It was a time where smartphones were not too prevalent, and even if it was, we’d have a slim chance of Google-ing the name of the painting.

Then towards the end, he had enough. He stood up, approached the door, and turned back to us just to say: “Questo dipinto, questo capolavoro é ‘La Trasfigurazione’ di Raffaello!” before he stormed out of the room.

That left us stunned. The painting eventually was unforgettable for me, and finally seeing it in person was something else. Room VIII had a church-like quality, with its dimly-lit environment that made Raphael’s three artwork pop more in the dark. It was, well, a religious experience.

We also went around some more and saw artworks from Caravaggio (The Deposition of Christ), Wenzel Peter (Garden of Eden), and angel clay casts of Bernini originally intended to be destroyed, but eventually became priceless relics of the genius.

Papa, who at this point has had enough of walking early on in the trip, just stayed near the entrance of the Pinacoteca, and waited for us to finish looking around.

At around 2:30 pm, the sun was shining nicely, and we looked for the nearest cafe by the Vatican Museum grounds.

There was one near the comfort room called Caffè delle Carrozze, where we ordered the menu colazione, and an additional hot cholocate for Mama. Mama had been drinking hot cholocate in Rome whenever she had the chance, and so far, the best was Fusion Café in Laterano.

After some rest and coffee, we headed out to the courtyard to look around. We also were trying to figure out how to go to the Sistine Chapel. I have asked a staff in a guard house where it was, and he just gave a long litany (in Italian) that we could just look at the sign boards. T_T

That was the issue with not having any tours booked, as we would have to figure out everything ourselves.

But where like Hansel and Gretel, we just followed the bread crumbs left by the groups of tourists who are likely on their way to the Sistine Chapel.

By the time we entered these halls, we knew we were at the right direction. As long as it gets crowded, the Sistine Chapel will be at the very end.

It was crowded to the point that we could not move at all. Tour groups with their flaglets usually just stop in front of an artwork, leaving those people walking behind no choice but the worm their way through them.

It also started to get warm with the number of people moving from one corridor to the next.

Still, I found the walk very fascinating, especially as we stopped by the Torso di Belvedere. It is a fragment of a marble statue of a headless and limbless man sitting on an animal hide.

Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment reportedly took inspiration from the Torso in his depiction of Saint Bartholomew holding the flayed skin of Michelangelo.

Directly next to the Torso was the Salla Rotonda, which looked reminiscent of the Pantheon. It is also a bit small and was a chokepoint for the the number of tourists who stopped to look around and take photos of its dome.

By the time we reached the Gallery of Maps, there was excitement in the air. Aside from the gallery itself was exquisite, it also meant that the Sistine Chapel was already nearby.

Towards the exit of the gallery was another chokepoint where people were almost next to each other.

Before we knew it, we were already entering the Sistine Chapel. It took me a bit of a surprise that we just entered it as we thought we were entering just another hall.

Obviously no photos inside thus I am unable to put anything here. There were guards shouting “NO PHOTO! NO VIDEO” every few second at tourists. While one may think that the rule was put in place to protect the precious artwork by the great Renaissance artists from flash photography inside the capella, it was more of the exclusive rights of Nippon TV who financed its restoration.

Still, it was an experience to finally see Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment and frescoes in the ceiling (The Creation of Adam was mindblowing!).

People were either asked to stand in the middle of the room, looking up, and the others seated at the edges leaving a narrow way for people to coming in and out.

It was surreal (I’d be using this word a lot because the whole trip to Europe was surreal for me) to know that the Sistine Chapel also witnessed several conclaves to elect the next pope for centuries.

At 4:00 pm, we finally got out of the Sistine Chapel, as we decided to end the day early. We had been awake quite early and we also have another early day planned the next day.

We passed by some more exhibits and a gift shop, which frankly do not compare to the view from the big window that has a view of St. Peter’s Dome. The overcast sky casted a soft light to everything it touches.

As soon as we reached the modern Bramante Staircase, we decided that we’d take that instead. The double helix was intricate, but the slope going down was not very easy for those with mobility issues. We had to support Mama all the way down, as she may misstep and roll until the bottom.

We were laughing so hard when we looked up and down only to realize that we were barely halfway the staircase.

As soon as we got out of the Vatican Museums, I immediately asked what they’d like to have for dinner.

We were already near Jollibee from the Vatican City walls, which meant we’d have Chickenjoy and spaghetti for the evening.

Papa was visible happy that we’d be eating something very familiar. We got a whole bucket of chicken, fries and spaghetti, which we carried inside the crowded train from Ottaviano station to Termini.

We had to rest early, so no more evening walks around Rome for Mon and me. The following day would be a day trip to Firenze, and we had to wake up early again for our already booked train tickets.

Steps: 18,719