Day 25 - Vatican City & Rome

Today we woke up at 6am, we were feeling rather spiritual and needed our fix! Luckily I had organised an early morning tour of the Vatican before the trip!!
We headed to the Vatican City where our tour started at 7.30am (public opening isn’t until 8.30am!) The tour was great, it wasn’t in your face religion that I was preparing myself for, instead it was how the Vatican City came to be, the artefacts they have found and saved through the centuries, how each pope decided on different things in the Vatican & mainly about the paintings and their stories behind said paintings. It also was the highlights tour - see everything that should be seen, if you want to brave the crowds after breakfast at 9.30am then do so at your own pace.
We went into the Sistine Chapel and learnt about how Michelangelo painted the roof, then 25 years later a pope begged him to paint the Last Judgement piece on the wall. He put a lot of himself in this as he didn’t want to do the Last Judgement painting - so he put a pope going to Hell, he also did a self portrait of himself as his face on flayed skin held by St. Bartholomew precariously between heaven & Hell.

After the provided breakfast at the Vatican (Italians can’t cook eggs but can make a great pancake) we made our way through the masses, we dodge, duck, dived and weaved through the crowd - it was humid too - so we skipped going back through most sites as once you’ve seen a few statues, you’ve seen enough of them in that heat! We went onto St. Peter’s Basilica through an entry point off the Sistine chapel the tour guide told us about so we didn’t have to line up for 3 hours!
After a walk through that, Katie and I decided we had our fill of churches and religion so we headed back to the BnB (Yes Vatican didn’t disappoint - I saw 3 gift shops on the way out - no bobble head Jesus’s tho unfortunately) Before going back to the BnB, we made a stop to Knight’s of Malta keyhole that looks to a garden and perfectly framed Saint Peter’s Basilica. The keyhole is part of the property owned by the Priory of the Knights of Malta, a Roman Catholic religious order of crusader knights that originated in Jerusalem in the 11th century. It is the oldest surviving chivalric order in the world and is a sovereign entity under international law. The estate also hosts the embassy of the Order of Malta to Italy.

After that we went back and rested from our travels this morning.

Once rested and cooled, we made our way over to Trastevere for some lunch - Again a TikTok reviewed place was in order - We went to Trapizzino which is Italian street food, pretty much Pizza base with a filling inside, we also had a Suppli Classico starter that is Mozzarella and risotto style rice Depp fried. Super Healthy lunch - so we had to wash it down with a glass of wine!

We ventured to Termini to see where we picked the car up as we didn’t feel great about trying to find it with luggage the next morning.

Dinner was at Il Tagliere Toscano Navona, a sharing board of cheese and meat, we also made light work of of a bottle of Rose! This was another TikTok venture - Dad, this is my secret along with Insta!

We then walked over to Frigidarium for more Gelato - this time there was a line but it moved quickly. We were served by the owner it seemed, he got Katie her Lemon & Liquorice flavours, I then asked for strawberry, couldn’t decide on the rest so he chose peach and yoghurt to go with it. It was amazing and I was very happy with this!

We ventured on past the Pantheon again, this time closed so I showed Katie the boards outside and explained what she had missed due to the lines. It is still amazing on the outside as this has stood the test of time since what is presumed 126AD, as it was initially built somewhere between 27BC & 14AD but was made from wood and burnt down.

We moved onto the Trevi fountain, took some photos and decided we were ready to head to the BnB, public transport doesn’t work like normal transport options it seems, busses turn up on their time and if they turn up. Took us 30-40minutes for a bus to finally go to near where we wanted but we made it back to the BnB safely which we were happy with!.Read more