I saw the Pope!!
It was early morning on Easter Sunday, so we made our way to the centre of the Roman Catholic Church: the Vatican. The queues were immense, as you’d imagine, but we only had to wait half an hour before we were headed into the courtyard with another 20,000 onlookers. The rain (saint) petered down.. (sorry not sorry)… so the umbrellas were up and out which blocked the view a bit but I saw him!! Parked at the front, giving service, he had his arms held out ready to bless the crowd. Now I wouldn’t count myself as religious but suddenly I felt so peaceful being there. I think it might of had something to do with the collected faith in the courtyard that literally buzzed from the crowd as they watched their shepherd.
We had to move because of our tight schedule so we ran off to the Mausoleum of Augustus; by this point my jeans had turned into a couple of waterfalls, but I just embraced it. Because of the weather, Dani thought it would be a good idea to grab an ice cream (?) and we stopped off at the Magnum store where she got a crazy good personalised Magnum.
Walking on, we found the Ara Pacis, which was so much bigger than I thought it would be. It was a dedicatory altar to Pax which was commissioned after Augustus’ triumphs in Gaul and Hispania. Notes made, me and Anya spent the rest of the time running around the altar trying to find the hidden lizards, carved as signs of a good harvest (I found four). Next we stumbled to the Pantheon, where the rain fell through the middle creating an indoor puddle which was cordoned off. Every time I see the Pantheon I always think of how much effort they put into constructing something beautiful, all in the name of faith
Later that night, Dani and I decided to take a late night stroll to grab some pizza, but we took a detour to the Colosseum and it was all lit up and looked so pretty! After dinner we grabbed some gelato and headed back to the Colosseum and took a couple snaps . The view was fantastic, but even at that time (11pm) there were still selfie-stick men lurking about- go home!
It rained all day, but we did so much- we went to bed on a belly full of pizza (again)