We planned this day over a month ago. Drawing on our past experience visiting the Sistine Chapel, we were hoping to avoid the shoulder to shoulder crowds in the chapel floor and the docents shouting “SILENCIO” every few minutes. How do you avoid a crowd in what is arguably the most popular tourist attraction in Europe? The Sistine chapel is at the end of the Vatican Museum, sort of like the last exhibit. To tour the museum you have to sign up for a timed entry. Our plan called for us to schedule our entry to the Vatican Museum for the first available time slot, 8:00am. We booked this way back at the end of October. Our hope was to get in first, run the length of the museum to the Sistine Chapel and get there long before the rest of the crowd worked their way through the exhibits, at least an hour, and have the chapel to ourselves. Today was the day we would find out if our evil plan would bear fruit.
We were up at 5:45am this morning and on our way to the metro line by 6:50am. We walked from the Ottaviano station to the Viale Vaticano and walked up to the entrance, arriving about 7:20am. We were about 20th in line. About 7:50am they starting checking passports and we advanced to the entrance doors (the Vatican is its own country, hence the need for a passport). Inside we went through security. They told us we had to check our umbrellas, couldn’t carry them through the museum. Bummer. How many people would get in front of us while we waited in line to check our umbrellas? There was no line and checking the umbrellas was quick. We hurried up the stairs and over to the entrance booth where they scan your tickets. There are about 6 scanners side by side to accommodate the crush of people, each with an employee to watch the operation. I held my phone to the screen, the gate opened and I was in! I scrolled to Sally’s ticket and reached back over the screen to the scanner . . . nothing happened. ???? My competitive side looked over at the other aisles expecting to see the masses flowing in, yet they were all stopped too. All the scanners had lost their internet connection and had gone offline. If we had gotten here two seconds earlier, Sally would have made it through the turnstile and we would be racing to the Sistine chapel while everyone else was stopped by the cranky gates. Instead, we were trapped. The minutes ticked by and our hopes of seeing the Sistine sans crowds started to fade.
After what seemed an eternity, probably 90 seconds, they came back on line. I scanned my phone and the machine balked. People started streaming through the other turnstiles while ours languished. The attendant went and got an electronic device that cleared us through and we were off.
We walked as fast as was politely possible down the length of the museum past the busts, the tapestries, the maps, through the Raphael rooms and finally to the last exhibit before the stairs up to the Sistine Chapel. During this whole sprint/walk we traversed room after room of exquisite art without another person in the gallery with us nor behind us, except one couple that had the same idea we did.
At the last exhibit before the chapel we were held up by a docent that told us the chapel would not be open for another 10 minutes. As we impatiently waited a small group of about 12 of us piled up at the doorway. Finally, it was 8:30 and he let us go. Up the stairs we rushed and into the chapel, first and only ones there. For the next hour, Sally and I, plus maybe 20 other people that straggled in had the magnificence of Michelangelo’s masterpiece to ourselves. We listened to Rick Steve’s excellent history and description of the roof as we gawked open mouthed upwards. We pointed, shared things we noticed, snuck a few photos, got yelled at but not once heard “SILENCIO” yelled. Truly a gift.
Satiated, we continued the museum tour which wound back to the beginning and with permission of a docent ducked a rope and started the tour again, this time to see the rest of the museum. Again we employed Rick Steves excellent audio tour and thorough enjoyed what we saw. The contrast between the empty galleries we had speed walked through and the mass of humanity that now filled the spaces was startling. We again entered the Sistine Chapel, now thick with people. We worked our way through like negotiating a tight box canyon in a Utah desert, finally exiting the museum about 11:30am.
We had reservations to enter St. Peter’s through the holy doors at noon, but we were too far away to make it on time. We headed that way and arrived at the pilgrim office about 12:45, got our leaflet with our instructions on what to say when and took a seat on a nearby pillar base to wait for our group to form.
About ten minutes later a lime green jacketed woman came over with a big wooden cross with the painted emblem of the 2025 Jubilee year on it, handed it to one of the eager people in our group, opened the gate and we began our long trek to the holy doors. Of course, we had passed through them last Thursday, but this time it was more official.
It took about ten minutes to reach St. Peter’s square where we had to detour to the right to go through the metal detectors before continuing on up the stairs and through the now open doors. It appears they hold all others passing through the doors to allow us sanctioned pilgrims through without the general rabble.
Once inside we put in our headphones and listened to Rick Steves yet again, this time he described the cathedral, its history and what we were now seeing. We passed out of St Pete’s and began searching for a Kebab place for lunch. We found one right across the river and stopped in for Kebab sandwiches.
We had been looking for Christmas presents and found a shop sporting what we were looking for on their website. Navigation in hand, we started for it. We soon discovered we were walking the exact same streets we had walked last night, only this time we were walking them in the light. We found our shop and were delighted to find the articles we were seeking. Gifts in hand, we walked the final 200 yards to our place. It was only about 4:30pm, but I felt exhausted. I flopped into the bed and lay there with a full body ache, one of completely spent fuel. I wrote a bit, but mostly just zoned. Were the previous 29 days catching up with me?
About 6:30 I roused myself to start cooking dinner, stir fry vegetables and spinach tortellini. Dinner was delicious and we ate everything we had bought the night before.
At this point in the trip we had only one more connection to make, one more plan to implement. We had reserved a room near the airport as our first reservation for the trip back in October. It was three miles from the airport. Now we just had to make sure we had transportation from there to the airport Wednesday morning. I had searched and found a bus that would take us from the airport to our hotel, Porto Di Claudio or at least within a quarter mile, but no bus went early enough in the morning to get us to the airport two hours before our 7:00am departure. We knew the 7:00am departure was going to be a pain to work with when we booked it, but the flight price was excellent and the total travel time with layovers was the best we had found.
Sally got on WhatsApp and communicated with the hotel and found they would transport us to the airport at 4:00am for €25, beating a taxi or Uber by about half. With our last connection cemented, we called it a night. I felt bad. Here we were in Rome, 7:30pm at night, the whole city out there and I was too tired to go explore. I guess there are limits, although I hate to admit it.
Something you never see, the galleries of the Vatican Museum free of crowds
What it looked a few hours later on our second pass through
Our room in Rome
Our room in Rome
No comments:
Post a Comment