Our Italian Adventure: Touring
I wouldn't have done it any other way. Guides in Italy are well-educated and must pass exams to be able to take people on tours. The majority of our guides were talkative and enthusiastic (only one carried out the duties in lackluster fashion). The guides spoke English very well; one did have a strong Italian accent, though, and would inject an additional vowel sound to the end of most sentences ("we're going to stop in this town-ah," "The food here is nice-uh." Our guides would allow you to find a pause in the spiel and ask questions about this or that, and they always had an informative answer. We learned a lot on our tours. Sure, we could have struck out on our own, guidebook in hand, but I'm sure we would have missed many details about what we were seeing, and I appreciated someone filling me in. Part of the fun of the tours was meeting other tourists from exotic locales like Iowa, and becoming quick, temporary best friends. Our tours also allowed us to "skip the line," a huge value on a time-restricted Italian adventure like ours.
My disclaimer--just as I'm not a food blogger, I'm not a travel blogger. But here are the highlights of our tour:
Our guide at the Vatican was Roberto, who immediately displayed the flag at the end of an antenna-like collapsible wand, and informed us that we were "group number three" and that we needed to watch for the flag. We followed him and listened for his shepherd-like voice calling to us over our earbuds: "Number three, follow me." He led us through traffic and into the bustling mass of other radio equipped, flag-following tourists.
My take-away from this particular tour: the tromp l'oeil paintings done by the masters. What looked like sculptures on the ceiling were really paintings made to look that way. Incredible. I was also interested in the painting of God mooning the pope in the Sistine chapel. Hmmm. (Psst. See it here: http://bit.ly/1kcN4zg)
At the end of the tour, Roberto led us into a fancy gift shop and extolled the virtues of the mosaic encrusted crucifixes to be found there. We bought some fragrant rosewood rosaries in that shop, only to find that outside, on a street less-traveled, we could have gotten the same things, with more adornment, for lots less money. Live and learn.
Our next tour was pretty special. It was the Scavi tour beneath the Vatican, in an excavation that has revealed an ancient Roman necropolis (graveyard), and what is believed to be the tomb of St. Peter. First, check in with the Swiss Guards at the gate (photo op), then on in to the tour.
Our guide here was an American who has lived in Italy for eighteen years and has worked on archaeological sites there. He was a rather serious individual, but we could tell that this dig was probably a very exciting mystery story for him. His love of the work was apparent, and we learned so much from him.
Our pick-up driver/guide, at the Rome airport, Nicola Suozzi, became our tour guide for four hours on our second full day in Rome. Nicola came by our hotel in his van and took us into the city.
"What do you want to see?" he asked. The Colosseum tickets had already been purchased--a tour scheduled for later that day, so I told Nicola to take us wherever he liked. Our first stop was at the statue of an elephant below an Egyptian obelisk at Santa Maria sopra Minerva (the elephant was called Il Pulcino della Minerva). Nicola explained that the elephant was a social commentary, with his rear end facing the Inquisition building, and his trunk curled around, "giving the finger" to that same institution. When Nicola found out that I was interested in tromp l'oeil paintings and artistic tricks, he took me to an amazing ceiling painting in another church that changed perspective as one moved beneath it. Wow!
Maria got sick during the first hour of this private tour, so Nicola took her back to our hotel. The rest of the morning was just Nicola and me. Since I had two tickets to the Colosseum, I invited Nicola to go with me. He hadn't been to the Colosseum in a while, and I think he enjoyed being my guest (he couldn't enter as an official guide). I benefited by having a great "unofficial" guide, who pointed out lots of interesting things regarding the building of this magnificent structure.
We went next to Florence and on to Milan. Visit my blog later for part two of Touring. In the meantime, enjoy our picture presentation: