Eurotrip Day 17 - Catacombs di Callisto and Why are we at the Vatican again?
Our final full day in Rome was upon us. Roger's last day in Europe before he returned home to start work at RIM. Waking up to the cold room was no longer a surprise. Somehow, I am the only one that feels cold when I sleep. Steve and Roger seem to never really use their blankets.Today's schedule was really up in the air. The only thing that we had planned was to visit the Catacombs di Callisto. We had read about the place in the Rick Steve's book but we had no idea where it was. The tourist map that the hostel gave us did not have this location on the map at all. In fact, after a lot of searching, we found out that the catacombs were outside of the city itself and outside of the map. We would need to take the subway to a certain station on the south side and then take a bus. For most of the trip until now, we had not taken a single bus just for travelling around, with exception to the tour bus in London that is.
The bus ride there was quite confusing and a little scary as we really had no idea where we were. If we became lost, we would not know how to get back. All we could do was trust that there were other toursists on the bus going to the same place or the bus driver actually telling us to get off. The heat was building up and going crazy. I could literally feel the sweat just developing on my skin. So we sat there, waiting, waiting, looking, waiting. We would pass buy what seemed to be Rome's country side with houses covered in vines and walls looking really old. We would finally signal to get off when we noticed several signs for the catacombs.
Normally, a bus would drop you off onto a side walk. Well, not this time. The bus had dropped us off on the side of a the street just across from the entrance to the catacombs area. I guess you can't blame them because there wasn't any sidewalk anywhere at all. If anything, several other tour busses had actually parked on the side road, preventing the bus from dropping us off in a safer zone. But anyway, back to the catacombs. When you first walk in, you really don't think about the creepy and dark atmosphere that you would expect. What we first saw from the main entrance was a large garden and field of grass that looked pretty well kept. We had not actually entered the underground catacombs yet. Instead, we were standing right on top of it, but we didnt actually know that until later.
We went to purchase our tickets (student price w00t) and then found out that we couldn't walk in the catacombs ourselves. One could only enter the catacombs with a designated guide that is provided by the place. Not only that, each guide would only speak a specific language like English, Italian, Spanish, French, etc. So we had to wait for the English guide to come and start the tour. Luckily the guided tour was free, because I would have been outraged if it were otherwise. At first, I did find it weird that our guide was a priest, but after he told the English group the history of the catacombs, it made sense. My initial expectation of a catacombs was a dark and demonic place where zombies lived or something, which I got from playing too many video games. It turns out that this specific catacombs was a burial site for catholics during the persecutions back in teh first few centuries A.D.
Our guide would accidently switch his speaking language to Italian once in a while. He would give slight laugh and chuckle and then continue on. He told us the reason for a guided tour and not a self tour was to make it safer for the tourists. The catacombs are so large and so maze like that any person could get lost in it. The walking space between the walls was very small, maybe a maximum of 2.5 feet. We would see several single body graves, which have all been emptied out to prevent people from stealing and disturbing the bodies. Once in a while, we would see a really large grave hole. These were made for an entire family to rest in, which seems like a nice thing to do.
Because the Catholics were persecuted, they hid in places like the catacombs and had a lot of artwork painted or carved into the stone walls. Although the quality of the art is nothing compared to the ones from famous artists, it is still interesting to see how the artists faired in such horrible conditions. Saint Cecilia's original burial place was also in these catacombs I believe as well as some of the early Popes before they were buried in the Crypts of St. Peter's bascillica. Several areas of the catacombs were blocked off by a glass or fiber glass wall to trap some moisture in the room to preserve the Frescos and small items like candle cups and pots.
Catholics had a hard time getting resources during the times of persecution, so it was not surprising for them to recycle old roman stone slabs and reuse them to log down some information or prayers. Our guide showed one specific stone slab that had been taken off from an old Roman building. On one side was the well written Roman text while the otherside seemed to be a more crude carving of words. Before we knew it, we were outside of the catacombs. The tour was not short but wasn't too long. And I wasn't permitted to take any photos, so everything is just a memory to me. We picked up a few things from the gift shop before we left to take the bus back to the city. Of course this time, we had no problem getting back. Our only concern was food. And guess what we had? PIZZA again MMMMMM....
It was around 1pm when we had returned to the city and we really had nothing else to do. We had basiclaly visited all the highlights except for one place, the Vatican. Yes true, we had already visited the vatican yesterday, but yesterday, everything was rushed and we didn't get to see everything. For one, we didn't get to climb St. Peter's bascillica and I haven't attended mass in the Vatican yet. So after lunch, we took the subway to the Vatican and run towards the tower entrance. For some reason, the line up wasn't that long, which made it better for us. Tickets were cheap 5Euros each. You can even take the elevator if you want to. But knowing how cheap we were, there was no way we would throw away the opportunity to do a marathon up the tower.
The first feeling that came to me as we ran up the tower was St. Paul's Cathedral. The endless stairs up was crazy. We would yell and scream everytime we went up several stairs just to express how tired we were and how much more we could see ahead of us. I personally think that St. Peter's Bascillica is taller that St. Pauls cathedral. You would get to the end of a set of stair only to find another set of stairs that had an even narrower space for climbing. It would get so narrow at the very it that atleast one of my shoulders would have to touch a wall or post in order to keep moving. The climb, though crazy, was well worth it. The view was awesome. You could see a lot of the buildings inside to of the Vatican walls and also the gardens that were professionally done to show the symbol of the pope. We stayed at the top for quite some time just enjoying the breeze and taking photos.
Before we went all the way back down, we stopped at the gift shop halfway down the stairs to pick up some postcards and stamps to send to people. For those of you who don't know, the Vatican has its own postal service and system. This means that you don't purchase stamps for the Roman postal service but you pay for the Vatican stamps and service. And depending on where you purchase the postcard, you have to pay more or less for the stamp.
With still a lot of time to spare until attending mass at 5pm, Steve and Roger suggested that it was free time to allow ourselves to do whatever we wanted to and just make sure that we meet up again for mass. I went around trying to take the difficult shots, which were still very difficult to take because I had no tripod. As I waslked around the Bascillica, I noticed a certain section totall blocked off with a small opening that seemed to be guarded by a person in uniform (no not the swiss guard). Anyway, it turns out the had blocked out that section for confessions. Having not gone to confession in more than 1.5 years and thinking that I would have very little chance to have another confession in the Vatican in the short term I took the opporunity. At first, I was very excited, and until I was just a few people away from the front of the line I didn't feel nervous. Thinking about your sins is very difficult especially if you find it hard to say. I was still very embarrased when I had to confess my sins, but better out than in I guess.
Shortly after confession and performing my penance, I walked out trying to look for Roger and Steve. Steve was behind the walls waiting for me to finish confession. Then a few moments later, I noticed Roger coming out. I guess he went to confession too, that put a smile on my face. Mass was about to commence in the chapel at the back of the church. There were a lot of people. Mass was performed in Italian the whole time. Steve would have an idea of what they were saying while I just sat there watching and following everyone else not really knowing what to say.
The end of the mass seemed to be a good mark to an end to our visit to the Vatican. It was great and I would want to stay there until they kicked me out, however, we had to hurry as Roger was going to leave soon. Sigh. To save us time, we took the subway back to the hostel and quickly looked for a place to eat. We hadn't actually had a fancy meal other than in Switzerland, but to say farewell to Roger. For Roger, a fancy meal was the least we could do. We walked across several restaurants around the Termini station checking out each menu. We really had no idea what to expect and what was reasonable for this type of meal. In the end, we just picked a restaurant out of desperation since we were taking forever to just pick one. The menu was ok, but I honestly think there was more selection in wines than actual food.
Steve asked for a wine recommendation, but that didn't help. The waiter just asked us "What type do you like?". I thought to myself "that is why we are asking you, because we don't know what we like". Wine was quite expensive. We did get an entire bottle of wine for 14 euros I believe. I can't be exact but it was around there. The dinner was very relaxing and very lively as we just kept talking and talking. Roger kept telling us that we would have more fun after he was gone, but I honestly don't believe that. Roger added something to the trip that no one else could do. It was definitely memorable, too bad we won't have opportunities come to us that easily anymore.
I drank 2 glasses of wine. Roger had arond 2-3 glasses and Steve drank the rest. All I could say was that I hoped that Steve wouldn't go crazy on the drinking for the rest of the trip, which would be difficult knowing that we were hitting Germany. Steve basically drank more than half the wine bottle, but he was still alright. We still had a lot of time before Roger had to head for the train station so we took our time to talk and pay the bill. By the time we left the restaurant, the sky was starting to get very dark.
Roger quickly packed his stuff and checked out. Farewells were never fun even if you know that you will see the person again in a few weeks. It is just that we had been travelling together for some time, you really miss the change. But I must say, when Roger first came on the trip, he didn't seem very excited about it. As he said, it seemed more like a chore rather than relaxing. Fortunately, at the end, he seemed to have developed the smile that could only be shown if you had a good trip.
Since the airport was way outside of the city, Roger had to take the train to the airport the night before. There were no busses or early trains that went there in time to let him catch his flight so he left early. With Roger gone, I was left with Steve. It was going to be a different trip from now on, but I still look forward to it. We have lots to see, and definitely not enough time to do it in.
Labels: eurotrip
posted by lazypig @ 3:18 PM
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