Not Afraid of the Fall by Kyle James

Author:Kyle James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Inkshares
Published: 2017-01-16T16:00:00+00:00

8/4/15

Rome, Italy

I had a feeling that every time we woke up in Italy, I would experience a slight headache and a full stomach. (That is what you do in Italy: you eat until you are sick, and then you chase that feeling with Tuscan wine.) I was surprisingly not as hungover as I would have imagined. I think this was due to the quality of the wine.

With no room for breakfast in our gastro chambers, we settled on espresso and geared up for a day of sightseeing. We were strapped for Roman time and had only booked two full days here to make room for the rest of the Italian cities we wanted to visit. Our unplanned trip to Croatia had really put a time constraint on our Italian journey.

Our Airbnb was conveniently a mile from Vatican City, so we started off to chat about worldly issues with ol’ Pope Francis. Eventually, we had no need for our Google Maps; I had a hunch that the dozens of tour groups all wearing matching shirts were going to the same place we were.

We arrived at the Vatican, and I instantly got goose bumps. Walking through the gate to St. Peter’s Square and staring up at the basilica was an awe-inspiring moment for the two of us. I am an un-apologetic Dan Brown fanboy, and Angels & Demons is my favorite book after the Harry Potter books. I often compare myself to his main character, Robert Langdon, despite the fact that we share no discernible similarities.

Suddenly a Swiss guard approached me standing in the square and told me in a thick Italian accent that we had to leave the square immediately.

“Excuse me?” I replied, confused and looking around to see if I had done anything illegal (always a possibility).

“The Pope is coming to speak to a private group at 6:00 p.m.,” he responded sternly. “We need to clear the square by 1:00 p.m. You need to leave immediately.”

Long story short, we were kicked out of St. Peter’s Square by a Swiss guard for the Pope’s safety, almost identical to a scene out of a Dan Brown book. I suppose Robert Langdon and I have more in common than I thought.

Next up, the Pantheon. It was hard to get to the Pantheon from Vatican City. It wasn’t the distance that made it tough; it was the tourists. There was no city we had been to yet, or that I had been to in my entire life for that matter, that had more tourists than Rome did in August. You would have thought there was a one-million-dollar prize for the best selfie taken in Rome today, and everyone there was competing.

Once we escaped the area outside of the Vatican that was littered with tourists and vendors selling mini St. Peter’s Basilica magnets and fake purses, we reached the area of Rome we fell in love with.

The alley streets east of the Vatican were lined with multicolored buildings with lush overhanging plants on the balconies.

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