The Breaking Point

Tuesday, 1 January, 2008:

When you spend an extended amount of time with any group of 10-15 people, at some point, a fuse is going to get blown and people within the group will start acting curmudgeonly towards one another. It’s just a matter of time. This is especially the case when embarking on an ambitious, whirlwind, two week tour of Europe that stretches from Paris to Rome with five other destinations in between. Today was the breaking point for our tight nit group. Not that it ruined the day or anything, but there was sort of a bad karma festering over it towards the end.

It started off auspiciously enough (for the McCoy family anyway) with news that Auburn had triumphed over Clemson in their bowl game while we were sleeping. Buoyed by that pleasant news, we and the rest of the group made our way to Vatican City to receive a New Year’s blessing from the Pope.

We found 100,000 people awaiting us when we got there, but we managed to squeeze into Piazza San Pietro in time to witness firsthand the Pope speaking. None of us are Catholic, and like millions (billions?) of others across the world, my reading of the History of Catholicism (up to the present day) contains equal amounts of horror and captivation, but there was still a certain reverence I couldn’t help but have for the moment, seeing such a monumental figure of history (in title at least) right before mine own eyes.

Even if, as Will can attest, I was adamant at one point that this wasn’t the pope speaking, but rather one of his similarly cloaked lieutenants. My visual memory of Pope Benedict XVI up to this point was of a stern, but virile looking man (for his age anyway) who took over in the wake of Pope John Paul II’s death. The one before me now was unrecognizable. Less than three years since he took over, he already looked as if his papal duties had greatly reduced his physical capabilities. Plus, he was wearing glasses while reading his New Year’s address. I hadn’t remembered seeing him wear them before, and somehow it didn’t occur to me that an eighty year old man may need his reading glasses from time to time. Eventually, I swallowed my pride and admitted my mistake to Will. This was indeed the Pope.

Once the Pope finished speaking, the large crowd actually dispersed pretty quickly, leaving us to enjoy more fully the immense beauty of Piazza San Pietro, with its Egyptian obelisk standing in the center. We eventually made our way up to St. Peter’s Basilica itself, admiring the dazzling uniforms of the Swiss guard as we entered. As visually appealing as the exterior of St. Peter’s is, its interior is the prize piece of any visit here. The inside is like some ornate, palace hall hidden beneath a cave. The nave, which is split up into three bays, is the centerpiece of this achievement. Numerous side chapels are dispersed within as well, and everything on the inside is lavishly decorated. We spent a good amount of time individually wondering around, taking it all in as it suit each of our particular fancy.

Mid to late afternoon approaching, we all united once again to begin an ascent of the dome to take in its spectacular vista of Rome before the light of day began to fade. On mine, Ryan’s, and Will's previous sojourn here two years earlier, we had climbed the stairs to top. There was an option to take an elevator, but by that point in the trip, we had climbed St Paul’s in London, Notre Dame, Florence’s Duomo, and St Mark’s in Venice. There was no elevator option at these locations, but we felt we would be doing ourselves a disservice if we did not climb to the top here as well, given that it was our last stop of the trip. That was two years previous. Here and now, no such stair option was exercised by any in our group. We were a tired bunch and only too happy to glide, rather than grind, to the top.

And the view was no less rewarding. As with seemingly every day I have ever encountered whilst traveling in Italy (except that train trip from Milan to Florence), the sun was shining brightly above a mostly cloudless, blue sky. Laid bare before us was the sprawling mass of Rome, seemingly stretching as far as one could see, from the Tiber all the way to the mountains in the distance. The various landmarks of Rome, not to mention its seven hills, were all within sight, whether it be the nearby Castel Sant’Angelo, the Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II, and of course, that most iconic of Rome’s structures, the Colosseum. Behind us lay the Vatican Estate and its beautiful, well maintained gardens. From above, it looks as though it provides the kind of spiritual sanctuary one might seek were he to find himself boxed in by Rome’s urban jungle.

The wind was beginning to gust a bit, as it would at times throughout the rest of the evening, which sped up our descent to the bottom. We wandered around the square some more, and paused long enough to take a group photo, before walking down to a very crowded sort of diner that a lot of Vatican visiting patrons (i.e., tourists) had seemingly spilled in to. The plan was to sort of just take a break here and maybe have a light snack since dinner wasn’t too terribly far away, but it turned in to something more than that, and darkness had well and truly set in by the time we walked out an hour or so later.

This is where things began to go a bit awry. The plan at this point, explicitly stated in Will’s itinerary, was to just walk around this area of the city, seeing the nearby Castel Sant’Angelo, the Pantheon, and the Piazza Navona, as well as whatever else happened to catch our eye. Things were going well enough at the Castel Sant’Angelo – it’s a fascinating looking structure – but on the walk to the Pantheon, the wind begin to kick up again, and a relatively balmy winter night in Rome became a night on the frozen tundra to some members in our party (cough, my Mom, cough). The seed had been planted. The Pantheon, normally a must on any visit to Rome, appealed little to our slightly disgruntled party. A quick detour to the Piazza Navona also appealed little and that was pretty much that as far as walking around Rome went for the night. I guess everyone was cold, tired, or just worn out in general at this point of the trip, and dinner was the only other thing people were interested in for the night.

Taking over navigation from Will, I led us southward, and we meandered through back alleys and side streets a bit, and pretty soon it was apparent I took a wrong turn, much to the chagrin of some in our party, and we had to circle back a bit, even going all the way down to the Tiber before getting to our restaurant. Finally. Our long nightmare was over.

We were a bit early for our reservation, but I don’t remember the wait being too terribly long before eventually all being seated at a long table together. If there were other parts of this day I would rather forget, one very memorable experience was the meal and my (and everyone else’s I think) first encounter with bucatini pasta. It may be a staple of people’s diet elsewhere, but here at the restaurant Al Bric, it was our first time encountering it and I now had a another favorite Italian dish.

Happy to end a long day on a positive note, we all grabbed taxis back to our hotel and called it a night.