Vidi, Vici, Visa

Rome was intense. It made Toronto feel like a backwater small town in comparison. The traffic is like a constantly morphing, organic beast which could swallow up small children at the slightest misstep. We were happy to get out of there with all three girls still completely intact.

Speaking of children, the Italians really and truly do love children and especially the littlest ones. Didi had her coy “ciao bella” down pat and along with a swaying little dance number, she was working the crowd wherever we went. This earned her and the, less brazen, older girls countless numbers of Chupa Chups lollypops, from waiters, shop owners and ticket-sellers. So many that we always had a spare lolly or two rattling around in the bottom of my purse in case of low-lolly-level emergencies.

The other benefit of a baby in tow is the magical opening of doors and unlocking of secret elevators at museums. We went to the Vatican Museum and at every step, we were silently beckoned into fast-track lanes, the girls were waved through without charge, and we were escorted to private elevators, riding up with a dreamy young Italian Vatican Museum staff member … who only had eyes for Didi. Who ever heard of twenty-something MEN interested in babies? Of course, he gave Didi the standard-issue lollypop upon our departure from the elevator.

We loved the Vatican Museum and the girls were quick to spot the “touch of God” on the ceiling in the Sistine Chapel. (Thank goodness Didi slept through the SC in her stroller. She has a new found habit of checking out the echo in cavernous holy places in Europe by letting rip a few blood-curdling screams.) We then headed over to St. Peter’s square and Basilica.

We separated at the entrance, Rachel and the two big girls went right to see Michelangelo’s “Pièta” and Dave took Didi off in another direction. We reconvened outside the front doors after half an hour, and enjoying the afternoon sun, we stood and watched the faithful, and the curious, file in to see the late Pope John Paul II. While Dave was recounting how Didi had been spontaneously swept into the arms of a nun and covered with kisses, we realized that the blessed-one had slipped through one of the small holes in the barricade that kept the public off the dais where the Pope delivers his public addresses. (You can see it in th picture behind Hannah.) Desperately calling her name, and trying to cajole her back to us, we (as usual), failed in trying to get her to do what we wanted. Eden then decided to go and sit on one of the three chairs on the platform, while a group of tourists had now gathered to watch and point. Finally after shaking a Tic Tac container furiously at her, we managed to get the little monkey to wander back over within arms reach and we scooped her up and over the barricade. The American beside us told that her antics had just made his day. Guess he wasn’t such a big fan of inimitable Renaissance art.