We had to get up especially early this day. We had scheduled a tour at the Vatican which was meeting at 8:00am to be ready to enter just before 9:00. The bus ride would take us about half an hour to get there according to Google Maps.
We would be leaving before breakfast was available at the hotel so we had to make due with some pastries and fruit we bought at a local convenience store. We ate that while waiting for the bus. The first bus to arrive was too full to get in with the kids so we had to wait for the second one. It was the Monday morning rush hour commute!
Meeting the Tour
My wife had scheduled the tour based on recommendations she found online. We chose one that would last half the day. We’d get a chance to see some of the museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica.
When getting off at the bus stop, it was only a few blocks from where we were to meet the tour. We were a little early and had some time to wait. Tomatico was getting hungry (surprise!) so we went in search of something more substantial to eat. There was surprisingly little open in the area and we ended up finding a McDonalds, of all places.
McDonalds, while not the best quality or healthiest of food, does provide a certain amount of comfort. Especially in Europe where there are electronic kiosks for ordering in a multitude of languages. If you’re in a rush and dealing with an about-to-meld-down child, it can be quite the savior to be able to order something in English and get exactly what you expect in just a couple minutes. Crisis averted!
We took our food to go and headed to the meeting spot. It was directly across the street from the Vatican Museum entrance. The kids ate while we found our tour guide. There were multiple tour companies meeting in the area with multiple tour companies and guides offering tours in many different languages, but we found the one we were looking for.
The Vatican Museum
I was a bit hesitant going to the Vatican. My wife and kids are Catholic, but I’m decidedly not. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I tried to keep an open mind. There was definitely a lot of history to take in and I’m a fan of learning about history.
It seemed at first that we might be the only people to show up for our tour. By the time we crossed the street to enter, two other couples had joined us so it still ended up being a nice small crowd. We all got ear pieces so we could more easily hear what the guide was telling us.
Since we were with a tour, we got a preferred entrance into the museum. The line was still long because there were so many tours, but they moved quickly through security. While Vatican City is technically a different country, we did not need to bring our passports. Security involved a metal detector and our bags went through an X-ray.
Once the group was through security we gathered upstairs in the museum while the guide told us a little about the history of the museum, how it was build and described some of the politics behind why things were build and displayed like they were.
Once the museum officially opened she walked us through a small fraction of the halls describing some of the artifacts, statues, paintings and history. We then proceeded to the Sistine Chapel.
Sistine Chapel
The Sistine Chapel has some rules you have to follow if you visit it. The tour guide said we could not talk while inside. Or at least we couldn’t talk above a whisper. We also couldn’t take any pictures. It was a very quiet and serene place even though there were a couple hundred people inside.
The room itself wasn’t terribly big, but the ceiling was really tall. There was a lot to take in with the painting itself and it looked like the pictures you’ve probably seen online or in books.
While we were inside a group of high school age kids got permission from the guards/security to sing a hymn of some sort. They appeared to a school choral group from the US.
After our allotted 15 minutes, we met the tour guide at the back to we could exit via a special tours-only exit which made the walk to the next stop much shorter.
St. Peter’s Basilica
We first saw St. Peter’s Square which was familiar from TV shows and movies. From there we were lead into the church itself, which we were told is the largest church in the world. I can definitely believe that!
The building was simply massive. To put things in perspective if you look closely in the picture above at the top center, you will see a plus sign (maybe it’s a cross). To the left there are some letters if you look really closely. The tour guide said those letters are two meters tall, which is over 6 feet tall. They certainly didn’t look human sized until you started walking towards them and they didn’t get any larger for a very long time. The place was HUGE.
Along the edges there are displays, artifacts and other sacred items, all with an amazing story. The guide was excellent in bringing the history alive and keeping the kids interested. We moved quickly and were still in there for over an hour.
There were some options with the tour when we booked that would allow us to climb to the top of the dome but we passed. Looking up at the the people that were doing that part of the tour, they seemed like tiny ants they were up so high up.
The Afternoon
After the tour concluded we were interested in going back to look at the museum again, but we would have had to exit, walk around, and then wait in line to go through security to get in again. The kids were not having it so we decided to get some lunch in a nearby restaurant before catching a bus back to the hotel.
We took advantage of the hotel gym. It was empty, had some equipment the kids could get their energy out on. I think they liked having a TV where they could alternate between watching cartoons and soccer games!
We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and essentially waiting for dinner. My wife had asked the concierge to make reservations at a restaurant she had researched. They didn’t take reservations online and we figured using the concierge would eliminate any potential translation issues.
The kids were getting antsy so we decided to head out and walk around for a bit. We took the bus from the stop across the street from the hotel. We headed to Piazza Navona. It was yet another example of thinking “this can’t be the right directions” and then turing the last corner and suddenly things opened up and there was a huge piazza in front of us with fountains and statues.
Not knowing the history it wasn’t really all that interesting to look at, though. We walked around through some of the side streets and ended up finding the Pantheon again. Nice!
It was getting closer to our reservation time so we started heading towards the restaurant. It was called Emma’s and we all really enjoyed our meals. Tomatico swapped his meal with my wife because he liked her choice better than the safe choice he made for himself. My youngest and I split a pizza, hoping we’d finally get something edible and were pretty happy with what we got.
To be clear the pizza we had gotten before this wasn’t just an unfamiliar style that we didn’t really like. That’s what most people think when we tell them the pizza was really bad. “You didn’t like it because it was different from what you’re used to!”. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case. A majority of the pizza we tried was simply not good. The crust was old and stale. The sauce was more like a red colored glue type material with little in the way of taste. Any cheese had more in common with plastic flakes than anything else. It was like day old leftover stadium food and it was pretty gross.
Luckily the pizza we got at Emmas was actually fresh with real tomato sauce and cheese so we were quite thankful and ended up splitting a second pizza as well (they were meant for one person).
After dinner we of course had to try another gelato shop before heading home for the night. Next up was the Colosseum!
Tomatico Travels 
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