Day 4- Vatican Museums Tour and Trastavere

On our 4th day in Rome, we decided to let ourselves sleep in. By the time we got up and dressed, we missed the hotel’s breakfast. We had an afternoon guided tour for the Vatican museums, and we planned to take a bus to the general area of the Vatican. On our way to the bus station, we stopped and shared a pizza with sausage at a little cafe. We had a little bit of extra time to kill, so we also stopped and got cappuccinos and a few goodies at a little rip-off cafe (Italy’s answer to Starbucks) with un-friendly staff. Once we made it to the general area of the Vatican, we had a somewhat confusing walk to our tour meeting spot. You can read the specifics about what our tour included here. We didn’t take a lot of pictures this day, probably due to a combination of picture-taking burnout and also, for most of the museum, no photos were allowed. Here is a picture of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica from a spot within the museum:

We came out to the Courtyard of the Pigna (pinecone) which is named for this giant statue which was cast in bronze in the 1st or 2nd century:


Here is a nice view of Rome from some balcony. I spy the giant Victor Emmanuel monument just left of center:


Here is a statue of Laocoon and his sons that was an example of some of the first statues to include emotion on the subjects’ faces:


We saw a TON of stuff on this tour. This place is huge and we barely scratched the surface of it in 3.5 hours. Like I mentioned earlier, there were no pictures allowed for the majority of the tour. We saw lots of old living quarters of past popes which were all richly decorated. I would highly recommend a guided tour of this place. There is such an overwhelming amount of stuff, and it’s nice to have a guide to point out the highlights and explain their significance. We got to go inside the Sistine Chapel, which was a bit surreal. Our guide told us a lot about the frescos and the things that were going on in Italy at the time and little secret depictions of public figures within the paintings. As we were exiting the chapel, our guide told us to turn right and walk down a long hallway. To the left was a large doorway which leads to the current pope’s living quarters. It is guarded by Swiss guards in silly uniforms and is closed the majority of the time. For some reason, this time, it was wide open as we walked out and we got to see the guards and peek into the pope’s current living quarters before the doors were closed. It looked like a lobbyish type area, and it was very colorful and full of artwork. It was a neat bonus!

We eventually made our way to St. Peter’s Basilica, which, in my opinion, was the highlight of this tour. Despite the fact that Ilya and I both lack strong interests or backgrounds in religious history and art history, we both thought that this basilica was breathtaking and fascinating. It’s huge, with high ceilings, and everything seems to be lined with intricately carved and inlayed marble and huge mosaics. Photos, at least the ones we took, do not do this place justice. You have to see it! Here is a picture that shows part of the dome at the top with lots of windows and light coming through. Below that is the altar, which was my favorite part, and doesn’t look all that great in this picture. Then there is the really beautiful stained glass window shining out from behind the altar, and a cool beam of light shining down diagonally behind the altar as well.


Here is another picture of the same thing that I found online and does the place a little bit more justice.

Here is a picture of Ilya frolicking about in the square outside the Vatican, shouting out to his favorite Uncle-In-Law with his Longhorns shirt in Rome!


After our tour, we decided to check out the Trastavere neighborhood which was relatively close to the Vatican. We had a Rick Steves audio tour for this neighborhood, and we had heard that it was a rather cute area. We decided to walk there, which took about 45 minutes, much of which was along the Tiber river. The streets were lined with trees, and many of them seemed to be calling my name. After the 3rd or 4th, I posed for a pic between two trees:


We were really hungry when we arrived, but most restaurants didn’t open for dinner for a few hours, so we decided to stop for a snack. We found this tiny pizza place that had a bunch of little fried goodies on display. Here is Ilya pouring us some Coke Zero, and you can see the display of fried goodies behind him:


Here is one of the ones we got, with the other one peeking out from a napkin in the background:


I forget the exact flavors, but they were filled with rice and cheese and other goodies. They really hit the spot.

Next, we started wandering towards the bridge which was the starting point of our audio tour. Suddenly, things got a little weird. People were running around with their maps covering their heads as if it was raining. Except it wasn’t raining in the traditional watery sense, it was raining BIRD POOP from the literally thousands of small black birds flying around and squawking overhead. We figured that people were overreacting so we tried to just be on our merry way, but no...it was clear that it was nearly impossible not to get pooped on. After each taking a hit in rapid succession, we pressed ourselves up against the side of a building to just barely shield ourselves with its overhanging roof. We stood there for 10 or 15 minutes trying to wait out the madness. After a few more minutes, the birds hadn’t stopped, but we realized we had to get on with our lives, and Ilya decided he was prepared to face the birds and their poop head-on. I wasn’t quite that bold, so I asked him to buy me an umbrella at a nearby vendor tent. We ran to the bridge, the starting point of our audioguide, past other running tourists trying to avoid being blessed by the birds of Trastavere, and bickering about umbrella positioning (“I don’t want to share! You said you didn’t want one! You should have gotten two, I’m not getting one whole side of my body pooped on because you’re too cheap!”). After a few minutes, the birds inexplicably disappeared, and things calmed down. We finished our charming walking tour and used our guidebook to try to pick out a restaurant.

On our search for a restaurant, we got a little lost searching for a certain street, Via della Scala. Ilya went into a bar hoping to ask for help, but no one seemed to want to approach the wandering tourist to offer help, and he was too shy. We continued on and stopped to ask someone on the street. The original guy we asked had no idea, but he turned and asked the older man nearby. This man seemed to be a local, and was bald, with a beer belly, smoking a cigar, with a chain sticking out of his shirt. He got VERY excited when he heard that we were looking for della Scala, as he knew how to get there. He proceeded to excitedly give us directions completely in Italian. At the end he looked at us as if to say, “Ok?” and we nodded and thanked him despite understanding zero of the words he said. We walked off in the direction he had pointed, and eventually made our way to Via della Scala with the help of his pointing alone.

The first place we chose was full and told us to come back in several hours, so we ended up eating at Trattoria da Olindo on the corner of Vicolo della Scala and Via del Mattonato. We couldn’t tell if they were serving dinner yet, but we saw an old woman in the kitchen and who appeared to be her daughter inside. I made Ilya poke his head in and ask if they were open for dinner. They said yes, and the old woman in a floral apron came out from the kitchen and sat us. Her daughter took our order, despite not speaking English at all. The menu was one page and had Italian on one side and English on the other, and it wasn’t very hard to communicate by pointing and using our limited Italian vocabulary. We got some house wine and an appetizer to start. Here is a picture of the appetizer, which we thoroughly enjoyed:

It may not be the most appetizing looking plate in the world, but it was really good! The pinkish whitish stuff at the bottom of the plate looked very suspicious to me at first. I thought it was some strange mystery meat, but it was actually delicious cauliflower cooked in wine. Above that are some peas, potatoes, and some kind of eggy thing in the middle of the plate. You can see our pitcher of wine on the right. Here I am enjoying a potato, harried by a long day of walking and unexpected precipitation. You can see the homey decor behind me.

Ilya got chicken with butter and sage, and I got chicken with tomatoes and olives. Both were delicious. We shared crema di zabione for dessert. That was ok, but I would have enjoyed it more had it not been slathered in what seemed to be Hershey’s syrup. All in all, this restaurant was a great, authentic Roman experience that I would recommend to anyone. But, as Rick warns in his guide, “don’t expect any smiles”. The staff are nice but very serious.

After dinner, I believe we got some gelato to correct the dissatisfying zabione experience. Next, Ilya, who must have had more of our litro of wine than I did, was not in any condition to properly navigate. So, I had to get us to a spot where we could catch a bus back to our neck of the woods. I remember us feeling a little more isolated on the quiet dark streets than I would have liked before finding the busier area with the bus stop. But we quickly made our way back to our hotel, where we took some very well-deserved showers and quarantined our shirts and the poop-brella.