Today, being Sunday, naturally we headed off to the Vatican (Pope said we should drop in).
We caught the train to a station near the Vatican and walked there, only 5-mins walk. Once we got through security we entered the Basilica. I didn’t realise that the Vatican was its own city-state!
We were taken back by the scale of the architecture and magnificence of the paintings and status. We visited the treasury museum which is inside the Basilica and viewed holy relics, some donated by popes or private collectors, some donated by various churches.
We decided to make our way up to the top of the Basilica and into the dome. We didn’t have the energy to walk all 551 steps, instead opting to take the lift half way, then climbing the remaining 320 steps which is grueling enough, especially since the steps are narrow and wind all the way to the top and you have to lean to one side as you acend!
The view from the top was awe inspiring
After negotiating the stairs back down again, we headed for Saint Peter’s Square and joined thousands of others to see the pope give a short speech followed with a blessing, although it was all in Italian, so no idea what he said.
We got back on the train and headed for the neighborhood of San Giovanni, then jumped on a bus which took us near St Domitilla’s Catacombs. It was a truly amazing experience to go underground and see hundreds of graves, see inside family chambers and witness walls of tunnels containing graves, each with inscriptions and some with fresco’s. There are over 15 kilometres of underground caves with 150,000 people buried in the walls (the grave diggers use to know every inch of the Catacombs and would guide relatives through the labyrinth of tunnels so they could see and pray for their loved ones.
We were guided by torch through 4-levels of tunnels. Although many of the graves were still sealed, many had been opened during the Barbarian invasion of Italy in the 8th century when several of the catacombs suffered continuous looting, although it was pointless as the people were not buried with anything of value. These catacombs had been lost for centuries before being rediscovered. The person who re-discovered these is said to have gotten lost for 3-days before finding his way out again!
Later that evening we went to dinner and Kylie discovered that our passports which were in a section of her handbag were missing. We returned to the hotel and checked everywhere (even though she saw them earlier that day in her handbag) and realised they were gone. The most likely scenario is that a pick pocket stolen them when we traveled in a packed train to the Vatican. As you can imagine, Kylie was very upset.
We contacted our insurance, the embassy and filed a report with the local police. We were hoping that by some miracle the passports would turn up the next morning, but the hotel staff said people don’t usually turn in passports as they end up being suspected as being criminals (great!).
This entry was posted in Uncategorized
