our neighborhood… The Roman Forum
We arrived on a hot humid afternoon. After a long, sweaty, crowded bus ride, and short uphill walk, we arrived to our apartment, and…no one was there. To be fair, we were a little early, and to be honest, they were a little late, so all in all we waited for about 45 minutes on the steps of the apartment, fighting off mosquitos. Well, at least I did. After dropping our stuff on the steps, I stayed and waited while Javier went to find wifi to try and contact our host. Let’s just say, it made for a long day.
que rico. Arroz con pollo.
Once we were finally in and settled, I needed some down time, and Javier was eager to get out, find an ATM, and look for a market to buy water and snacks. So, out he went, and in I stayed. 🙂 That night, we were picked up by Javier’s uncle, Napo for dinner with his family. We arrived at his in-laws a little after 9pm. His mother-in-law had made Peruvian food, and it was delicious! Javier was in heaven. By this time, it had been quite a while since he had Peruvian food, and even longer since he had homemade Peruvian. We spent the evening
look at her smile
together, eating and drinking. They all chatted nonstop, and I tried, and failed, to keep up. Napo’s family was so kind and generous, and he has the cutest, happiest daughter I’ve ever met. This baby is little over a year, and is ALWAYS smiling. It’s so contagious. You just look at her with her huge grin, and you have to laugh. Absolutely adorable. The night ended around 1am, and we were exhausted, as was everyone else. Napo drove us home, which was around a 45 minute drive one way, and he had to work the next morning. What a great guy. We had planned on meeting the next day, if everyone felt up to it, to go to Tivoli, but sadly, that didn’t happen.
Hello Vatican City. The Pope’s blessing.
The next morning, we set our alarms to see the Pope! Every Sunday, when the Pope’s in town, he gives a benediction to the massive crowd in St Peter’s square. Well, we weren’t going to miss our chance to see El Papa, so up we were, bright and early. On our way to the Vatican, we stopped by a cafe for coffee and a croissant. Since we wanted to arrive a little early, we decided to get our coffee to go. Mistake. They were served in little flimsy plastic cups. The longer the hot coffee sat in the cup, the more gelatinous it felt. So, we drank it pretty quickly. As a side note…later that week, we were running some
coffee in plastic
errands, and saw many local people zipping along the street with this little, white, plastic, to-go cup, as well as tons littered along the street, so I guess it’s fairly normal there??? We arrived in St. Peter’s square with time to spare, and found ourselves a cozy little spot where we would be able to see the Pope unobstructed. We listened to his benediction and received his blessing and left feeling happy and at peace. Now, Javier is Catholic, and I know this encounter was very special to him, but even I, as a Christian, really do love this Pope. I love that he is Jesuit, and is actively trying to change some of the archaic laws so that more people can be accepted into the church. So, there we were, not understanding a word being spoken, but joining in with the thousands of others while he read, prayed and blessed the congregation below. What a glorious start to our day!
Pantheon
We tried to contact Napo a few times throughout the day, but it just wasn’t meant to be. We decided to walk around and explore the city. We walked around the Piazza de Espagna and the Trevi fountain, which was under construction…Boooooo!!! We walked through the Pantheon and dropped 2 euros into a little machine attached to the wall that gave us a surprisingly good audio tour of the place. After almost a week of pasta and pizza, we needed a break and found ourselves at this hamburger place that, after some extensive research, was
Pantheon
dubbed the best burger outside of the U.S. Talk about a letdown. Either way, we were full, I had half a burger in a to-go bag, and we made our way home. Somewhere along the way, we walked by a church. The doors were open and there was some really nice music being played. I guess we were feeling a little spiritual from our morning adventure, so we decided to peek in. It looked like they would be taking communion soon, so we figured it was toward the end of the service, and decided that we would catch the tail end. Yeah, not so much. Next thing we
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The Spanish Steps
know, everyone is up and greeting one another with hugs and kisses. An adorable little girl with downs-syndrome ran up to Javier and gave him the biggest hug. At that point, we were committed. We walked around greeting everyone in “pace” (peace in Italian) and got sucked into the middle, while my hamburger stayed in the back. The people were singing and dancing, so we joined right in. At one point during the service a woman falls over. Javier and I are looking at each other like…did she just pass out? Is she okay? Some other people had the same thoughts and started to go over to her when the woman sitting in the same row stopped them and said she was fine. Javier and I started at her for about 5 minutes as the songs went on. Finally, she woke up, sat back up and started singing. Aha! It’s that kind of a church. At this point we were shocked and a little uncomfortable. Next thing we know people are lining up for prayer. One by one, the women are falling over. There were bodies strewn everywhere, while the rest gingerly stepped around them. Just as we were talking
Sunday night church experience.
about making a run for it, this woman comes up and grabs us. She is leading us to the front for our blessing from the priest. O.M.G. Now, I have been raised in church my whole life and I have been exposed to all kinds of practices. I agree with some more than others, but don’t necessarily think that it’s wrong if I don’t agree with it, it might just be a little weird. All this to say, we received the prayer and the blessing, no one fell over, but I did take a peek at Javier during this whole thing, and I could see the priest’s hand pushing Javier’s head back…back…back… for a moment I thought…is he going down??? But alas, the prayer ended, we actually felt good, and at that point, kept on walking, grabbed the hamburger and exited the church. It was a good time.
St. Peter’s Basilica
The next day, we went on a tour of St. Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican museum, as well as bought and mailed a couple of postcards from the Vatican 🙂 St. Peter’s basilica was amazing. The structure is huge and beautiful. We were both blown away at the sheer magnitude of the place. The Sistine Chapel, however, we both felt, was just okay. Sacrilege! I know!
Now, before we left for the day, I was wearing a tank top and asked Javier if I needed something to cover my shoulders for the Vatican. He looked at me like I was crazy, and since it was
Italia t-shirt
hot, I didn’t want to wear or carry anything extra. So, we left the apartment and were on our way. On arrival, we saw the signs…no tank tops allowed. Ha! So, while Javier waited in the security line, I ran across the street to a souvenir shop and purchased a 5 euro t-shirt, which I wore in both the basilica and the Sistine Chapel, and has now been relegated to Javier’s sleeping shirt.
The next few days were spent exploring the rest of the city. We took a tour of the colosseum and went on a little adventure to find the immigration police in the middle of nowhere. We took tons of pictures in both the day and night, and met with Napo’s family one last time for dinner. We met his wife at the train station and the three of us took the metro to a little neighborhood where we ate, you guessed it, more Peruvian! During dinner, a man walked in the restaurant selling roses. My birthday was
Pantheon
coming up, so Napo bought me a rose that made me really happy not only that night, but the whole following week. The night was wonderful and when we left, there were big hugs and thank-yous all around. It was really nice to be able to spend one last night with Napo and his beautiful family.
To see more pictures of Rome, click HERE.
Muchas gracias!! Napo and Family.