On this, the last full day of an ambitious, exhausting and exhilarating vacation, the carefully-wrought plan finally started to come undone. I'm happy that it held together as long as it had, but with less than 36 hours to go, there was unfinished business to attend to.
We all wanted to see St Peter's Basilica, I for my third time, Lorna for her second, and Melissa for her first. IMO it is simply the single most beautiful public work of many human hands in the world.
Melissa also wanted to see the Sistine Chapel, and so Lorna wanted to see it again, with her. I had no trouble resisting that interminable shuffle and buffeting by pushy tour groups with experienced and ruthless leaders.
We got a late start, so the intended early arrival at the Vatican was lost, and there's no point arriving in the thick of the morning tour-bus crowd, so we headed north instead, to catch the afternoon's planned sites and any other targets of opportunity that might present themselves, including a Guess store where one of them had her eye on something that I don't recall.
There were many, but they were mostly of the small shop with items of little interest to anyone except us. I got some meats and cheeses for the flight on Sunday, and some bottarga di Sardegna (the mullet variety that I had not gotten to try). I don't know what they bought, and I don't need to know. Christmas is coming...
We also explored the famous Spanish Steps, the expansive Piazza dei Populi, the ancient yet current Pantheon, and then finally Trastavare and the Vatican.
Ancient yet current? Here's the story. The Pantheon was created in Republican Rome as a temple for all of their many gods. They weren't monotheistic, so a temple to many gods was suitable to many people, who were happy to pay for its maintenance over the generations. After the emperor Constantine declared monotheistic Christianity to be the faith of the empire, the Pantheon was handed over to the Roman Catholic diocese as a local church. For 1500+ years, it has been maintained as a parish church and it has seen many Christian influences, but no prelate has ever had the catastrophic failure of vision to erase the pagan infrastructure, so it remains the best-preserved example of Roman church engineering.
I don't have any photos inside the Vatican Museums, as they are forbidden. Saint Peter's Basilica is not so protected, to the top photo on this page and the Pieta below right give you a sense of that literally awesome space.
Naturally, awesome spaces draw tourists, and tourists draw predator merchants, some of whom provide good value for your euro and others that are just thieves. Equally naturally, even the honest ones flatter and cajole customers into their own establishments at the expense of their competitors. But you needn't be credible or susceptible to their flatteries; just ask Melissa.
We took a taxi to the bridge to the Trastavere neighborhood, and paid the cabbie when he got into the traffic snarl by that famous bridge. We walked across and explored Trastevere (over the bridge from Via dei Coronari) long enough to eat Black Lobster with salad in Trastavere along with the usual goodies, none of it obviously frozen from the Sysco truck.
The Vatican is an infuriating place, as if by design. Like Disneyworld, everything about is it designed to keep you onsite, spending money. I say that like it's a bad thing, but it's no worse than Disneyworld. You get a lot of value for your piaster. IMO, come when the kids are still in school and the tour groups are smaller. The attraction is worth the price, but you can somewhat minimize the aggravation.
Where else will you see Michelangeo's Pieta displayed as intended, as a devotional piece and not as a sterile museum piece like his David at the Accademmia in Firenze / Florence?
Then we recrossed the Tiber and enjoyed a long, slow up-hill walk with frequent stops like that for linoleum-like fake prosciutto at the proudly vegan Buddy's, and an over-hip cocktail bar, until we got back to the cozy Monti neighborhood and a proper dinner of real food: pork, cacio e pepe, and sea bass with Verdicchio at Sciué Sciué!
