Roaming Through Rome and Vatican City | #AdriaticHorizons
The end of 2018 is almost upon us, and as such, I’ve been reflecting on some of the big moments of my year. The past few years have been full of big life events like job and relationship changes, but things in my life have been relatively stable throughout 2018. This is in many ways a good thing, but it makes I’ve had some trouble coming up with a highlight reel for the year. Scrolling through my Instagram feed, though, there have been a lot of moments worth celebrating over the last 12 months. My chorus won Sweet Adelines International’s Harmony Classic competition in St. Louis last month. I added lots of new clips to my portfolio, including bylines on Hello Giggles, a site I’ve been reading for years. And of course, I went on my first Contiki tour.
I first started browsing Contiki’s website a few years ago after they sent several YouTubers on tours around Europe (see, influencer marketing works!). As someone eager to travel on her own, but a bit anxious about the reality of doing so, a group tour would not only allow me to check a bunch of places off my travel bucket list, but provide me with a group of like-minded travel buddies. After all, there’s strength in numbers.
The problem was that I could never set aside the time to make one of these trips happen. I was either too afraid to take a significant amount of time off from work (even when I had plenty of vacation days in the bank), or I would use up my vacation days on short weekend trips, family obligations, and trips with my parents. These were all great trips (as you can tell from the travel posts on this very blog over the last few years), but I still had the urge to strike out on my own, in a sense.
I don’t fully believe in New Years Resolutions, but I did add “leave the country at some point” to my list of goals for 2018. A few weeks later, I bit the bullet and booked Contiki’s Adriatic Horizons tour, a week-long journey through Italy, Slovenia, and Croatia. Why the Adriatic? I could wax on about the art of Italy and the mountains of Slovenia and how I’ve always felt connected to Southern Europe. In reality, I’d just watched Call Me By Your Name in theatres and wanted to pretend I was the very cute girl Timothee Chalamet dumps for Armie Hammer.
Our tour kicked off in Rome, and I decided to fly in a day early to get ahead of the jet lag (spoiler alert: I was still jet lagged). Along with accommodations and transportation, the tour included several activities in each city as well as add-on excursions like gondola rides in Venice and a cave tour in Slovenia. I knew I definitely wanted to visit the Vatican, but a visit wasn’t included in the tour and I worried I wouldn’t have enough free time to make it there on my own. Faced with several hours to myself before the tour kicked off, I decided to book a Context Tour of the Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica to check the smallest country in the world off my bucket list.
Though I was raised Catholic, my connection to the church these days is more cultural than spiritual. The subject of religion fascinates me, but I consider myself more agnostic than anything. And while my politics don’t align with those of the church...at all, really, I can’t really shake the fact that Catholicism is a deeply-ingrained part of my heritage. I will always be drawn to churches when traveling, and knew I had to visit The Big One.
Our tour group consisted of just five people (including me) and a docent, a total pro who’s been giving tours of the Vatican for years and offered great in-depth insight into each piece we saw. I was excited to see some of the works I’d studied in my college art history classes in person, like the Apollo Belvedere and Hercules of the Forum Boarium. The museums were completely overwhelming, and even included some modern pieces inspired by the church. Of course it all paled in comparison to the Sistine Chapel, which visitors are not allowed to photograph (seriously, they will find you). I’d attempt to describe it but...you kind of have to see it for yourself. We then moved on to the basilica, which is also breathtaking, even moreso when you realize that it holds several mummified bodies of canonized popes. I tried not to think about it for too long.
All three sites were crowded, as they always are, so I was unfortunately unable to recreate any scenes from The Young Pope.
After my tour I returned to my hotel and finally met up with my tour group. Contiki draws young travelers from all over the (English-speaking) world; I found myself traveling with folks from as far away as Brisbane and as close as a few blocks away from my apartment. And naturally, everyone was cool as hell. We spent the first night getting to know each other over pizza and wine, and then took a short evening tour of the city, complete with a gelato stop.
The next day began with an early morning tour of the Forum and the Coliseum, two musts for any trip to Rome. Throughout the tour, and especially in Rome, I found it hard to fathom just how old everything around me was. As residents of a comparatively “new” country, we Americans have a tendency to get excited over anything that’s more than a few decades old. With that perspective, it was particularly fascinating to walk among the ruins of buildings from thousands of years ago. The fact that the Coliseum, an amphitheatre built in 80 AD with nearly triple the capacity of Madison Square Garden (this was before fire codes, of course), is still standing shows just how brilliant humans can be.
From there, we broke off into smaller groups, roaming (pun intended) the streets in search of the Pantheon, the Spanish Steps, and even more gelato. We found more churches and brightly colored buildings lining little alleyways. The day ended with a tour of Rome’s famous street foods, including several types of pizza and a glasses of wine at Marlon Brando’s Roman apartment. I managed to make it back to the hotel in one piece; unfortunately, my phone did not join me. Don’t worry, it all worked out - and I turned the experience into #content for The Financial Diet. I’ve got plenty more photos from my journey, so stay tuned!
