Rome

Long lines and little sleep in the Eternal City were all worth it in the end.

Edinburgh is beginning to feel cold. Until now I’ve been able to defiantly wear shorts and a light jacket while most people have been transitioning to heavier coats, pleased with myself and my Midwestern hardiness. But the daily real feel temperatures crept down into the low 40s recently, so this morning I traded my shorts for sweatpants and a puffer. The days have also grown noticeably shorter, especially the past couple of days. European countries that participate in daylight savings change their clocks a week before the States does, so this week instead of being +5 hrs EST I’m only +4 hrs. My walk to my 5:10pm class was noticeably darker than it was last week. To counter the waning sunlight, which was not exactly abundant in the first place, I invested in some Vitamin D pills, which the NHS recommends between the months of October and March.

But on top of my artificial aid in staving off winter blues, I got a lot of sun and warm weather this past weekend in Rome. Joseph and I took a shuttle from the center of Edinburgh to the airport, which is just outside the city, at 6am Friday and made it through security before 7:15, plenty of time before our ~9am flight. We both caught up on some lectures we missed earlier in the week, and I had an exciting moment when I spotted a guy in an Indianapolis Colts sweatshirt; I gave him a shout of “Go Colts!” and his reply revealed that he was British, which made me happy considering most British NFL fans support the most successful teams of the past decade. I’ve seen a lot of NFL gear since being here, but that was the first person I’d seen in Colts merch.

I received another pleasant surprise upon boarding my flight. I was assigned the middle seat for the three hour journey, but no one ever claimed the window seat next to me. When the attendants closed the doors, the guy on my left and I shared a look of, “Well, why not?” and I slid right, creating plenty of legroom for me and him.

The flight was smooth, and upon disembarking the plane the first thing that struck me was how warm and sunny it was. 70 degrees and partly cloudy never felt so good. We bussed into the city and walked for about 30 minutes from the main train station to our hostel. Our hostel was much nicer than our one in London, but we traded some quality for location—we were about an hour walk away from the main sites of Rome. Rome’s public transportation isn’t the best, so we walked the ~2.5 miles down toward some spots we wanted to check out.

It was mid-afternoon on a Friday, so I shouldn’t have been surprised by the crowds, but I was taken aback by how many people were there. Still, we were able to grab some photos at some stunning spots.

Next, we crossed the Tiber on our way to a neighborhood called Trastevere, which has a very classic look and good restaurants (and some good gelato, we found out). One of our fraternity brothers from Wabash (shoutout Drew Rathbun) recommended a place called Tonnarello for dinner. In short, the food was fantastic. I got amitriciana pasta, and we split some focaccia and a bottle of red wine (which seemed never-ending, especially on a day when we hadn’t drank much water haha). After dinner we went to a couple of bars in Trastevere (again, thanks Rathbun) and walked the hour back to our hostel contented and eager to see more of the city on Saturday.

We weren’t able to get much sleep because we had to get up early to stand in line for the Vatican Museum, which is extremely competitive to get into if you don’t have tickets ahead of time. Tickets sell out months in advance, so we knew we had to get to the museum early so we could stand in the non-ticket line. We got up at 5:30, got ready, caught an Uber, and were in line by 6:30. The museum opens at 9, and we were hoping to get in by 10:30am, which would give us time to explore before our 1:00pm tickets for St. Peter’s Basilica. Our wait ended up being a little longer than we expected; we didn’t enter the museum until just before 12. The tiresomeness of our wait was eased a little by a couple we met in line from Louisiana who were spending a year backpacking across the world. They’d already spent time in Japan, Vietnam, and Thailand and were in Rome to kick off the European leg of their trip.

Because we didn’t want to miss our 1pm entrance time for St. Peters, we sped through the Vatican Museum faster than anyone should. The setup makes it so you can’t just go from room to room freely. You have to follow the set path from room to room throughout the whole museum, which means that if you want to get to the Sistine Chapel, you have to pass through most of the museum first. But even if we had spent the whole weekend there we could not have possibly appreciated all the art and artifacts there. The museum possesses an embarrassment of treasures, and I would highly recommend visiting if you’re ever in Rome. I didn’t take any pictures of the Sistine Chapel because they ask people not to, but it was breathtaking.

We exited the museum a little after one and booked it around the block to St. Peter’s Basilica. The line to enter was ridiculously long, and a worker told us that no one had gotten in yet because of Jubilee celebrations, which happen once every 25 years. We had tickets to enter the Colosseum at 4:45 and hadn’t eaten anything except croissants yet so the prospects of waiting for hours in another long line seemed unappealing. We called an audible and didn’t try to get in, hoping we could arrive early the next day when entry was free the whole day.

We had a delicious lunch within sight of the Colosseum and made our entry time comfortably. I am a fan of Roman history and was especially looking forward to the Colosseum. It felt smaller than I thought it would. I mean smaller in the sense that it was obvious in person that the front rows of spectators in the lower bowl would have been right on top of the action and how packed the spectators would have been in the arena, which sat anywhere between 30,000 and 80,000.

We went straight from the Colosseum to the Roman Forum, which is only a couple of minutes’ walk away. It was surreal to walk the Palatine Hill, see the vendors’ stalls that are still mostly intact, and stand a stone’s throw from where Julius Caesar was stabbed to death in the Temple of Saturn. The gardens around the Forum were also lovely.

We stayed in the Forum until the workers kicked us out, by which time night had fallen and rain was coming down thick and fast. We escaped the elements by visiting an Irish pub called Finnegans, where we watched most of the Napoli vs. Inter Milan match on that night. The prices were too high and we didn’t have seats half of the time, but it served its purpose. I had a Corona, which amused me—a Mexican beer in an Irish pub in Rome. Make that make sense. Anyhow, we also decided to get up early to ensure we could get into St. Peters the next day. Since admission was free and Pope Leo XIV was presiding over mass, we knew it would be packed, but we figured that our trip would be incomplete if we didn’t at least give it the old varsity try. We headed back to our hostel and got to bed a little after 11pm, eager for sleep to replenish us before our alarms went off at 4:30am.

We checked out of the hostel promptly at 5am and took a taxi down to St. Peter’s. We were thrilled to see that we were among the first 15 people in line to enter. By the time we got in at 7:30, the back of the line was out of sight. We didn’t have the special tickets needed to enter the Basilica itself for Mass, but we were in the third row of seats set up in front of the Basilica. I read while we waited for the 10am mass to begin, chuckling to myself every now and then; it was hard to believe I was attending a papal mass at St. Peters in Rome. I’m not a Catholic, but it was hard not to feel a certain amount of awe at the grandeur of the whole scene. The mass itself was difficult to follow, not only because I’m not Catholic but also because it was almost entirely in Italian. After the mass ended, we stayed in our seats for a while in hopes that Pope Leo would make an appearance in the Pope-mobile. That didn’t happen, but he did address the crown from a window of one of the buildings nearby. Unfortunately, part of the Basilica mostly blocked our view of him.

Finally, we got our chance to enter. We passed through the Holy Doors, which are open this year on account of the Jubilee, and the immensity of the structure became more apparent as we stepped over the threshold. The smell of incense still hung heavy in the air as we walked, awestruck, through the Basilica. The altar, which according to tradition is set above the tomb of the Apostle Peter, was especially stunning.

After a lunch of pizza and soppli (a kind of fried cheese and rice ball) and a dessert of tiramisu and cannoli, we headed to the Pantheon. We had seen it from the outside, but because we had a few hours before our shuttle to the airport, we decided to pay the 5 euros for tickets and go inside. The dome was quite impressive and it felt cool to be standing in a building commissioned by Augustus, but the inside was plainer than I expected. Having just come from St. Peter’s, though, I’m aware that my scale for grandiosity was probably skewed.

It was time to catch our shuttle to the airport for our return flight. But, since it was close to our pick-up point, we stopped by the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore, where Pope Francis is buried. After waiting in line and going through security, we only had 10 minutes in the Basilica, but we did indeed see Francis’ tomb. It was simple, like something you’d see in a cemetery, which is exactly what Francis requested. After seeing the elaborate papal tombs in the Vatican, its plainness was refreshing.

When we got to the bus stop a few minutes later, something felt off. None of the buses said they were going to Ciampino Airport, where our flight was taking off from. I looked at the sign of shuttle departure times and immediately realized I had made a mistake when I bought our tickets. Instead of buying tickets for a shuttle that left Rome at 17:30, I had bought ones for a shuttle at 05:30. It was a simple and frustrating mistake that I had managed to avoid making up to this point in the semester, but it came at a rather crucial juncture. Our flight didn’t leave until 8:20 (or 20:20, I should say), and it was only ~5:20, so I contemplated looking for another bus to the airport. But there were none within sight, and I didn’t want to risk missing the flight, so I made the snap judgement to call a taxi and pay the price (quite literally) for my blunder. Our driver was great, Roman born and raised, and we talked with him throughout the 30 minute ride to the airport. He told me this was his last ride of the night because he was a huge Lazio fan and needed to get home to watch their match against Juventus. He got us to the airport a little after 6 and I gave him a “Forza Lazio!” as we parted ways. Lazio ended up winning 1–0!

I was assigned a middle seat for the flight back, and though I hoped that I would once again hit the lottery and slide into a vacant window or aisle seat, I knew that was unlikely. However, I found an equally good arrangement when I boarded. My seat “B” was right by the exit; I had as much leg room as I wanted. A cherry on top of a good weekend.

We got back to our flat at midnight and crashed after having some dinner. Overall, Rome was fantastic. It included a lot of standing in lines and very early mornings, but it was worth it for what we got to do and see.

My week this week, like last, is busy. Tonight I’m carving pumpkins with some friends, Wednesday I’m going to see a play that a friend is in, and Friday is Halloween, which is a big holiday in Edinburgh. But what I’m most excited for is on Saturday: I’m attending a Scotland vs. USA rugby match. I’ve never been to a pro rugby game before, so it’ll be a new experience. I’m expecting to have loads of fun, even if the US, as the case will probably be, get trounced.

PHOTOS:

1–5: The Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon (pretty proud of my photography on this one, not gonna lie), St. Agnes Cathedral, and a couple of beautiful fountains.

6–8: Dinner and the Trevi Fountain

9: A chocolate croissant and coffee (that I couldn’t finish—not a big coffee guy) for breakfast Saturday.

10–18: A tiny fraction of the great works at the Vatican Museum. I really like the four statues: Caesar Augustus, Minerva, Aesculapius, and the Belvedere Torso (the Torso inspired Michelangelo as he worked on the Sistine Chapel).

19–27: Trajan’s Column, the Colosseum, bruschetta with prosciutto, pizza, and more views of the Colosseum. Notice the intricate “basement” of the building. This would have been beneath the arena’s wooden, sand-covered floor.

28: Video of the Roman Forum

29–36: Some shots from the gardens and the Palatine Hill, as well as the Colosseum lit up at night.

37: St. Peter’s Basilica when we arrived at 5:30am

38: The view from our seats. We watched the mass happening inside the basilica on massive screens set up outside the building.

39: A poem by John Keats, who died and is buried in Rome. I also finished C.S. Lewis’ The Problem with Pain, which felt ironic considering I was about to attend a Catholic mass and Lewis was an Anglican. Actually, maybe it was fitting considering the Pope and King Charles met for a public prayer service recently, the first of its kind between the head of the Church of England and the RCC.

40: My view of Pope Leo. He was speaking from the middle window, which was obstructed by a balcony railing, as you can see.

41: A snapshot of the crowd. The photo doesn’t do it justice.

42: This photo gives a sense of the Basilica’s size. I didn’t get a photo of the humongous statues of Peter and Paul that flank the Square. Both statues are over 18 ft tall and are mounted on pedestals ~15 ft tall.

43–51: Inside the basilica. Some highlights were Michelangelo’s Pieta statue, the altar, and the amazing ceiling. The view of the courtyard will be familiar to Conclave (2024) viewers.

52: A video of St. Peter’s interior.

53: Tiramisu and cannoli. The tiramisu was a little too wet and coffee soaked for my taste, but the cannoli was divine.

54–56: The dome of the Pantheon and the tomb of the painter Raphael, who was buried in the Pantheon upon his request. Humble guy.