Beth: The next morning we headed to Terminal Station. Lauren was going to take the train to the airport to pick her mom up. As soon as we arrived at the station, we realized that the train to the airport didn’t run all that frequently, and the next train was leaving soon. Lauren left her large pack with me and ran for the train.

Lauren: I ran to the train and jumped through the doors just as it was pulling out. Once again, I made it in but my bag didn’t, and I had to wrestle to pull myself and my bag all the way into the train. I tugged and wiggled with all my might, and finally got it free, staggering ungracefully into the arms of one of the uniformed train attendants who had been watching my performance.

Beth: Between my daypack, my backpack and Lauren’s backpack, I was stuck with close to 80 pounds of luggage. Luckily, I still had the luggage cart I had bought to help me carry my bag when I joined Lauren in Hawaii with a still-healing leg. I piled the bags on the cart and dropped Lauren’s bag off at baggage storage in the station.

A few hours later, Lauren arrived with her mom and we headed towards the Vatican, where Lauren and I had rented an apartment for a week off of Craigslist.

When we arrived at the apartment, we discovered it was just a cute as it looked in the photos — except about half the size. It would be considered small even by New York standards. The owner joked (I think it was a joke, Lauren thinks he was serious) that he’d show us around the apartment, even though you could see the whole thing standing in one place.

But the location was amazing. From the large windows in the “living room,” we could see the Vatican. We think we could see the building where the Pope lives, and at night Lauren’s mom would ask the Pope, “Are you sleeping?” and each morning she’d say, “Good morning, Pope Benedict!”

The next day, Lauren and I had to go to the American Embassy to get more pages put in our passports — we didn’t have room for another visa. The three of us took the metro to the right neighborhood, and Lauren’s mom headed for a café while we hiked up a hill in search of the Embassy.

At the top of the hill, the street ended and the Embassy wasn’t in site. Only a humongous gated building.

“Is that it?” I asked Lauren.

“No way,” she said. “That’s way too big. Maybe we should ask someone…”

“No, that is it!” I responded. “See? There’s the flag.”

Sure enough, the Embassy was not one but two large buildings on a huge compound. It was surrounded by a 20-foot tall iron gate, and outside of those gates, there were police barricades all the way around the building. And several well-armed Italian police officers.

We asked one of the officers how to get in (since there was no obvious entrance and no breaks in the barricades) and he responded in Italian. ‘Come on,’ we thought, ‘we’re all about learning the language of the country you’re visiting. But this is the U.S. Embassy — and the guards don’t speak English!?’

We finally found the right place, but they wouldn’t let both of us go in, because I had a backpack… or because only one of us “needed” to go in to do what we needed to do. (I’m not sure which… this guard spoke English, but it wasn’t very clear.) After Lauren came out again to have me sign some papers, I headed down to join Lauren’s mom for some coffee at the cafe.

Lauren: We hadn’t been able to find many English newspapers and didn’t have any English stations on our TV in the apartment, so we were dying for some news. In particular, my mother, the CNN/MSNBC addict absolutely needed to know what was going on with the Anna Nicole Smith case. Sure enough, CNN was on in the Embassy and snippets of the story were blaring from the set. After getting our pages (this only took about a half hour, and the best part was that it was free), I went to join my mom and Beth to give a full report. Beth had found an English paper, but, oddly, there had been no reports on this riveting story.

Afterwards, we headed towards Trevi Foundation again, getting gelato and later, pizza.

My mom and I went in and picked out which pizza we wanted (while Beth immersed herself in the newfound paper) and I asked about the beer. Beth and I had not yet tried the Italian Peroni beer and were curious about it. It was 6 Euros, which was a bit expensive in my opinion. I guess I muttered something about this rumination under my breath, not thinking that anyone would hear me, or that, more importantly, anyone would understand me.

Beth: The Pizzaman came out a few minutes later and asked in Italian if the beer was for me. “Si!” I responded, understanding this. The he started on a long rant about the beer.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” I told him. “I don’t speak Italian.”

“The beer is not too expensive!” he insisted before pouring it and heading off. I had no idea what he was talking about and went back to reading my paper. He continued to pop in and out of the restaurant, singing Italian songs with a strong vibrato.

During lunch, the Pizzaman came out again, telling me to move the newspaper that I had laying half on our table, half on the empty table next to ours.

“This is the dividing line! The border. Those people,” he said, pointing to the restaurant next door, “are bad people. We must keep the border. We must stay on our side of the line.”

Then he disappeared back inside, singing as he went.

That afternoon, after grabbing some canolis and checking out the Spanish Steps, we headed to the Vatican. When we arrived, we discovered it cost more than US$15 to get in to the museum. Already exhausted by the exorbitant prices of Rome, we didn’t want to blow our budget any more. We realized that we could just go into Saint Peter’s Square without paying, so we wandered through the rain to the other side of the Vatican.

As we entered, going through security, an old Italian woman in line started speaking to Lauren in Italian. Oddly, Lauren seemed to understand what the woman was saying and she started translating for us. It was a slight speaking-in-tongues moment, since I knew Lauren didn’t know Italian and yet she was translating what this woman said, sentence-by-sentence. (Apparently, it’s a lot like Spanish, but my French did nothing to help me with the translation…)

The pope was speaking the next day, she told us. She pointed to the seats lined up all through the Square. People were here to get their tickets.

The woman left us after that, and we headed to the Basilica. The artwork was unbelievable; the whole cathedral was like on enormous art museum with paintings from the Renaissance, intricate artwork across the ceiling, and perfectly carved statues at each turn (including Michaelangelo’s “Pieta”).

I was shocked, however, to find the bodies of several saints lying-in-state, having been preserved for, in some cases, hundreds of years. Their bodies were in elaborate robes and you could see the rings still on their slightly shriveled fingers.

Perhaps sensing my apprehension, Mrs. B grabbed me and blessed me with Holy Water that was nearby.

Lauren: I could hardly contain myself as I saw Beth’s horrified look, like she was a vampire being burned by a watery blessing. We noticed that perhaps Beth was a bit uncomfortable in this belly of the Catholic beast. We, of course being the good Irish/Italian Catholics we are, felt well at ease to go about ogling at this and that and posing for various pictures.

Beth: Shortly thereafter, despite my reluctance, Lauren and her mom convinced me to pose at a confessional with Lauren while Mrs. B took a photo.

We next wanted to head to see the “dead popes” in the tombs, but we had a hard time figuring out how to get there. Lauren and her mom had a brief conversation about how to ask where it was, and whether it was obscene to ask one of the guards where they kept the dead popes.

We finally were directed to the Catacombs. As we entered the hall, an announcement was made in Italian, and a woman ahead of us turned to us and angrily “Shhhhhhh’ed” us.

An announcer then came on in English: “Attention, this is a sacred place. Please observe silence and reflection.”

Lauren and her mom could barely contain their laughter.

We wandered through the halls, seeing people praying to Pope John Paul II and seeing what are supposed to be the remains of Saint Peter.

Lauren: After we left, we wandered around the stores around the Vatican, checking out the various Pope related trinkets and Vatican paintings. We were looking at postcards when my mom pulled one out and said, “Look at this postcard, the Pope must have been standing on his roof for this one!”

“Um, no,” I said. “I’m pretty sure that’s photoshopped.”

We both had a great time pulling out more postcards of the Pope standing in front of, behind, or hovering angelically above various sacred sites, either noting how nice it was for the Pope to make such an effort to do so many photo shoots for the sake of Catholics around the globe or asking, ¨Say, do you think this one is real or photoshopped?”.

Beth: That night, we headed to Travestavere, an old-school Italian neighborhood. We found a restaurant that advertised that it didn’t do the “tourist menu,” and we settled down to an amazing dinner, starting with the best appetizer we’ve ever eaten: buffalo mozzarella cheese wrapped in eggplant and drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with pesto.

Afterwards, Lauren insisted that we get a nightcap so that I could have grappa before I left Italy. I had tried grappa before and hated it, but Lauren insisted it was different to have it in Italy. I ordered a coffee and Baileys instead, Lauren’s mom got Limoncello that her cousin Jimmy had suggested she try while in the homeland, and Lauren ordered the grappa, which both Lauren’s mom and I tried.

“I’m surprised that doesn’t burn a hole in the glass,” Lauren’s mom remarked about the grappa. And that’s all that needed to be said about it.