Have you ever thought that you saw a famous person only to figure out that they were someone completely different? Or, have you ever (nearly) walked around an entire country in a day? Well, even if you haven’t, I can guarantee that you will understand the feeling once you finish reading this story.
We arrived outside the city walls of the Vatican City, just a few minutes from the main city entrance. Despite having to walk on the side of the road, we got to the entrance in one piece. As we walked through, I was instantly overwhelmed by the ornate decorations adorning every inch around me. We walked through the gate into a big open space just in front of the main cathedral. Despite our valiant efforts to get up earlier than our competition, the line seemed to stretch on forever, and we started to lose hope when we got into the line. However, looks can be deceiving. The line, to our surprise, was moving quite fast, and it was looking like we would only need to be in line for half an hour. However, when things started to look uphill, something horrifying happened. A group of four women went and cut us in line! Now, you might think that this was just an accident on their part, but not five minutes later, they went off and found a spot much closer to the entrance of the cathedral. We were just standing there, aghast, as they walked across the open space amidst the sea of people and disappeared. We couldn’t do anything to stop them, so we just had to stand and acknowledge that what they just did was quite impressive. Just then, the line suddenly seemed to be moving faster, and before long, we were walking up the main stairs into the cathedral.
Stepping into the cathedral felt like I had just arrived at the hall of the gods. Everything was gold. The coffered ceiling, the walls, the lights, even the patterns on the floor Things were also so big! I felt like an ant in a human home, except that this one was slightly fancier. Intricately carved statues adorned the pillars, and the floor patterns were amazing. We looked around dazed as we slowly approached the front, where we realized there was an ongoing service happening. Sitting on a golden chair in front of the altarpiece was an old-looking person with a Mitre. This was unmistakable for the pope, who, if you don’t know, is the main person in charge of all of the Roman Catholic churches around the world. We watched for around an hour as they carried on their service when, at one point, the ‘pope’ lifted up his Mitre, revealing a red cap. Even an idiot at this point would have realized that he was not, in fact, the pope and instead was just a cardinal, who is the second most important person in a church. We were confused since he clearly was also holding Papal Ferula, but in the end, we had to accept the sad truth that we did indeed not see the pope. Wrapping up our visit to the cathedral, we went down to the crypt, where we saw St. Peter’s tomb along with the previous pope’s.
What did we learn from this experience? Well, it is that you should never get your hopes too high, or else you might get a sad surprise like us. If you would like to hear about other things we did in Rome (such as seeing the Colosseum), then stick around for next time!