19Apr2009: Day 328: Bus Tour and Vatican (Rome, Italy)

We decided that today we’d do the shuttle from the hotel and then we had to figure out the metro system. Luckily, Chris figured it out pretty quickly and got us into Rome. From there we hopped on a bus tour. We sat on the top and Chris filmed, I took some pictures, and Makenna looked around.

We decided to hop off at the Vatican even though we were going to do this tomorrow as I thought it was closed today. We saw some of St. Peter’s Basillica. A lot of it was closed off and the crowds were surprisingly huge for a Sunday but not because they were trying to go to mass. Makenna was miserable, absolutely miserable. The biggest problem was that she was tired and they wouldn’t let us take the cart inside so she couldn’t sleep. She wouldn’t stay with us, was hitting, spitting (which is a new trick she’s picked up in the past month,) and just all around a pain in the butt! It made Chris and I both on edge towards each other. I finally told him to walk around and film what he wanted, and I would move up front and find a place to sit with her.

I found a “chapel” which was really just an area off to the side not really separate from anything and it was roped off but people were sitting including another family with a child. They got up and left shortly after I sat down and then the ushers were coming and saying I couldn’t really be there but I said that I had a small child who needed to try and sleep so they let me sit there. I had another usher later come up again and I finally said, “Is there a time limit to sitting here?” He finally relented since he saw Makenna. She, shortly after, decided to not want to sit there any longer so the whole misery, for me, began again as she wanted to get out and do what she wanted to do which was to run away. I moved to a more obvious place in the middle and Chris finally found me. He said he had been looking around for 45 minutes.

I figured that he would’ve eventually found me from walking around and filming the various spots as he was filming but he just finished filming the one spot and then left to look for me. Oh well, communication is short and sporadic when you have an unwieldy child. I assumed he understood what I was saying and I guess I was wrong.

To make matters more “wonderful” it was raining outside so we couldn’t really go outside. We decided to head down to the vault area where all the popes are buried. It was a quick 10 minute or so walk through the catacombs and most of the hold up was around the newest internment of Pope John Paul II. No surprise there. You weren’t supposed to take pictures down there but there were plenty of people doing so.

We then left and picked up Makenna’s pushcart and she fell asleep pretty quickly. Chris & I grabbed bite to eat then got back on bus, finished tour back to where we started. We walked to another church which had a display about Galileo. After stopping at McDonalds for Makenna we then went to the National Museum where they had statues and frescos and a lot of old coins from different times and places. What’s nice is that the museum’s are free until April 29th – why until then I have no idea.

We made it back to the hotel and left again to find a place nearby to eat. We walked down the road and found a pizza place that had seating and that was open. We got Makenna some rigatoni which she was very unwilling to eat at first. We had to tell her that if she wanted more water she had to take a bite of rigatoni. She finally relented and found out that we weren’t trying to poison her and that it was actually pretty good. I had a calzone and Chris had a pizza – practically a full size pizza but the crust here is very thin. I then got a dessert which I shared mostly with Makenna, of profiterole with chocolate and vanilla gelato on top. It was pretty tasty.

At the restaurant, there was this red-headed Italian girl (which I think is very different to see,) who came up and was talking with Makenna but she mostly spoke Italian and we understand very little. I was surprised we were even able to get our waitress to understand what we wanted to get Makenna as I didn’t see rigatoni or penne noodles on the menu but mention an Italian noodle and they get it. I could be losing a whole bunch of weight with all the walking we have been doing, if I didn’t turn around and order the cheesiest and greasiest things off the menu.