The Pope's Here? duh.

Rome -$1,000. Bus to the Vatican on Sunday morning - 5€. A Chance Encounter with Il Papa - priceless.

We had read that the Pope makes public addresses on Wednesdays, so we figured we wouldn't get to see him. So here it is, Sunday morning, and on our 'to do' list was the Vatican and the Colosseum. We figured we'd take the bus to St. Peter's, see the church and the Sistine Chapel, and then go to the Colosseum, which is open later. We'd get there when we got there, we figured.

So we had a leisurely breakfast, took the bus to the Vatican stop, got off and started poking along the street towards St. Peter's, looking in the stores, chatting, dawdling. We came out of one store, and we heard someone talking over a loudspeaker in Italian - 'probably the Pope, ha ha!' we joked and poked ahead.

Then we came into view of St. Peter's Square, and it was jammed with thousands of people all looking up to the right.

Sure enough, there was the Pope at his window with the carpet hanging out. We just looked at each other, dumbstruck, with the emphasis on dumb. Here these multi-thousands of people rushed over to St. Peter's and probably waited hours to see him, and we just strolled in.

We were excited to hear Benedict speak in 6 different languages - all fluently, it sounded like. (Even though I don't like this Pope, and David thinks of JP2 as "the REAL Pope," he is the Pope, for cripes sakes. And we WERE at his house.) It really was pretty exciting. Thousands of people cheered every time he started speaking in a different language - their language.

That was the good part. The bad part was that all those thousands of people wanted to get into the church just like we did, and the line was unbelievable. We figured it would be hours before we got in, and then it would be jammed. So we decided to take the bus back around and see the Colosseum. It was a very good idea. There wasn't that big a crowd there (probably because everyone was at the Vatican!!!) so we only waited in line about 10 minutes - much less than we had been warned.

That is one heck of a big stack of old stones. Incredible, really. We wandered around for a long time trying to take it all in.

Mid-afternoon we figured we should head back to the Vatican, since it was David's last chance to see it. It's all the way across the city, so we took a bus and a subway to get there, that took almost an hour. On the subway train, two men got on right beside us, one with a clarinet and one with an accordion. They played a spirited song while the train rolled - and I thought it was very charming and gave them some coins. David considers accordion music to be the work of the devil. HE wanted to pay them to stop playing.

We waited in line about 20 minutes to get into St. Peter's - also not bad.


There's nothing like walking into a place like that - you just look up with your jaw hanging down. David's reaction: 'If this doesn't make you convert, nothing will.'

First we looked at Michelangelo's Pieta, right there in the first chapel. Magnificent. Then we were walking towards that incredible Baldaccino, when all these men in black suits started herding everyone to the sides - we happened to be right in the front line. Nobody knew what was happening -- the tiny little nun in front of me asked, was the Pope coming??? Very strict crowd control, very hush hush.

Then a line of altar boys started filing in from the side of the church; dozens of them, followed by dozens of priests, and cardinals, and then a guy in a gold robe and big hat.

David is sure it wasn't the Pope, and it probably was the head bishop of Rome or something. It was still pretty darned exciting. They all filed in, chanted around the Baldaccino, filed the length of the church down one side and up the other, right in front of us. So here we stumbled into another unusual and exciting thing in St. Peter's. What it it they say, God takes care of the imbeciles?

The one bad thing: the Sistene Chapel was already closed for the day, so David didn't get to see it. Next trip to Rome...

When we left, we realized we hadn't had anything to eat since breakfast. We stopped in a little cafe down the street from St. Pete's - David called it the Pope's Bar and Grill. "Self-service" - reasonably priced, right? A small plate of fish, carrots, ravioli, and two cappuccinos -- €29 -- $40. Ouch.

From there, we took the bus back to Castel St. Angelo and walked over to the Piazza Navona, through all these tiny little stone streets. It was dusk, and whenever we passed a church, we stopped in. Even the small obscure ones were magnificent.

In the square, we stopped at one of the cafes for coffee and desert. The maitre d' charmed us right into the place, and promised us it would be paradise. It WAS wonderful, sitting there as the sun went down, watching the sights and sounds in this famous piazza. David said, "EVERYONE from the United States should come to Italy!!" I couldn't agree more.

One young man was sitting on a bench across from us, playing his guitar; it was beautiful. David said it sounded just like the way his dad plays. We had a wonderful time, and tried not to cringe too much when the bill for 2 coffees, a dish of strawberries, a slice of almond cake, and one glass of the house wine was €42 -- about $58. We definitely paid for the atmosphere today. But we decided we were worth it.

We took a cab back to the hotel, because we were weary from so much walking - we had a really nice cab driver who played along with my clumsy halting attempts at Italian.

Tomorrow morning we take the train to Florence.