This day, Monday April 13, 2015, is sunny and warm in Rome. We are walking with a group of 10 toward St Peters to tour the Necropolis of St Peter. Heavy stuff. We (our immediate trio Jake, Clementine and I) have prepared with our italian staple breakfast at the cafe on the corner from her hotel in Campo Di Fiori. 3 small tables and spare chairs attached to an equally small interior cafe by an awning at the very corner of the square, the cafe delights with small, delicious milky coffee. Croissant with butter and jelly. Jake with some eggs and juice. Both the color of an orange sunrise. Sitting, sipping, observing the life on the square; sharing glances and ideas, food, sometimes. Now, sated, we can attempt this exclusive tour and in retrospect its a good thing we charged up for the adventures ahead.
Walking in shade and sun, over and along the Tiber, thru some piazzas, we morph along as largish groups do. We get to know the professors Snow - the Snow Doctors - better on the walk. He's heavily inked, she's very intellectual and as a married couple they teach/head things up at the at the International House at Katholic University in Leuven Belgium where our daughter is taking her Junior year (home base: Loyola Maryland). This is a mandatory class trip for the group that we are now walking with: Jim and Dale Snow and 8 students including our daughter.
At 200 participants a day the tour we are heading to take is difficult to book in the theater of the Vatican box office (!) but Jake and I are in the right place at the right time to understudy - going on for 2 girls from Loyola who did not make this class trip. In other words, we're using their tickets, bought well over a year ago, for entry.The entry we seek is at a quieter side station, we pass through large crowds to get there even at this early-ish time of day, and fill up a small room to be instructed on what we are about to experience. Turns out to be very highly regarded artifacts of the Roman catholic variety that are buried under the current St Peters Bascilica in an archeological-horizontal pattern that, viewed up close can be somewhat disconcerting and nauseating. As thousands of "regular" tourists stream overhead, we follow a very tightly controlled Italian woman with good English but a heavy accent and a regimented script, through this ancient, weird, underworld. I have a good "ear" but still have to pay close attention to understand Maria; the stilted rhythms of her descriptions makes her spiel even denser. We are going down thick uneven stone steps and the air is changing and Maria sounds just a bit too regulated. Tombs, colors on remenents of wood or fabric that still sizzle; smooth small crypts, babies, sigh; the grand finale is the tomb of St Peter - his actual bones!! which are taken on faith here, cause I really saw nothing - they point several meters away, in a darkish corner - thru a small window!! - with a red laser light and say : there are the relics, the bones of St Peter. It's a good half hour too long for me but fascinating in its claustraphobic way. I could totally skip the whole upstairs tour that followed - the inside of St Peters - but went along with the group. So crowded - so totally the opposite of what we had just seen - that it felt more like a decompress zone than a graceful tour of a peaceful place of worship. Frankly, with the selfie sticks and video taking tourists of all races; the trinkets for sale and the general lack of any air of gentility - I hated it.
Our power trio departs from the general group as we head back across the river to the neighborhoods of Rome where we are staying. Its late afternoon, lunchtime by now, so we gather up Will from Cynthia's condo - he's an 18 year old, she's his mother, our friend and mentor on this trip! - and the 4 of us - Jake, Clementine, Will and I - enjoy a long, civilized lunch. We top lunch with a visit to Zara which by now Jake has not only discovered but fallen for. We siesta at Cynthia's condo. This is my type of afternoon, and needless to point out - I enjoyed it much more than our morning mission.
After siesta we pick back up with a run, via taxi, to a chic secondhand store. Now our lunch crowd has increased with Mama (Cynthia) and she and I try on some things but we are too amazon built for some vintage and nothing wowed us anyway. Time for cocktails so we walk to the lobby of the hotel Cynthia lived in at first in Rome. Glam. A few rounds later we gailey make our way thru the streets, finally splitting up: Will and Cynthia to the condo, we 3 returning Clementine to Campo di Fiore to bunk with her student group for the night. On the way we buy her pizza and walk and eat and talk. Finally turning into the Campo is fantastic: gas heaters warming, framing and lighting up the night, a band playing House of the Rising Sun, a lovely life - this is where we had our cafe this morning, how different it is right now!! We take a turn through the square, drop Clementine at the hotel and stroll the now getting familiar 15 minutes back to the heavy green doors of Piazza dei SS Apostoli, number 49 and the slightly lumpy beds at Cynthia's!!
