Churches and Gelato

Years ago there were rumors of Notre Dame playing a football game in Rome (maybe against Boston College, I don't remember all of the details).  I went to see Notre Dame play in Ireland so I was ready to make the trip to Italy for a game.  All of my international travel before was to English speaking countries (Ireland, England, Canada, and Australia).  Italy was definitely the first non-English speaking country I wanted to get to.  As the years went on and that football game never materialized, I decided I wanted to go to Italy even if I wouldn't get to see football or any other sport (I saw football in Ireland, tennis in England, baseball in Canada, and football in Australia).  By the beginning of 2020, I was ready to plan a trip to Italy.  And then the world fell apart.  I had found 206 Tours on the internet and they ran various pilgrimages to several different countries and there are all sorts of different packages with some involving multiple countries.  If I had been able to do it in 2020, I probably would have done a Rome and Poland pilgrimage.  I would love to get to Poland to see St. John Paul the Great stuff and World War II stuff.  But in 2024, I wasn't too excited about the idea of going to a country that borders Russia and Ukraine.  I also considered combining Rome with France.  I would love to get to Lourdes and Normandy, but I have almost zero interest in Paris.  I ended up deciding on the Rome and Assisi pilgrimage.  The dates were convenient and most of the other packages involving Rome would have had one less day in Rome.  So I was off to Rome for four nights and Assisi for four nights.

I wanted the first picture of this post to be St. Peter's Square.

When I first got to Rome, I had most of the day to myself before meeting the other people in my tour group (it included people from Tennessee, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Kansas).  I didn't have much planned since I was tired and I was going to get to see all of the stuff I wanted to see with my tour group.  All I wanted to do that first day was get pizza and gelato.  I got there in the morning and fortunately I was able to get into my hotel room right away.  After relaxing until lunch time, I walked to a pizza place by my hotel.  Traditional Roman pizza is rectangular and they cut you the amount you want and the price is based on the weight of the slice.  I got some slice with ham and potatoes.  The ham was very good.  Then I went to a gelato place.  Inspired by John's pandemic ice cream tour, I did an Italian gelato tour.  I got a small gelato each day at a different place.  There was a lot of good gelato, but the dark chocolate and pistachio gelato I got on my first day at Gelateria La Romana was probably the best that I had.  I went back to my hotel and took a nap before meeting the rest of my tour group in the evening.

There was other really good gelato, but I think this was the best.

The next two days were what I was looking forward to the most.  We were in the Vatican both days.  The second day will almost certainly be the day in my life that I crossed international borders most often.  I went back and forth between Italy and the Vatican many times (I resisted the urge to be like Homer Simpson at the American Embassy in Australia).  We went to the Vatican early in the morning for the pope's general audience.  Pope Francis came out walking with a cane and then later on he was in a wheelchair.  He spoke mostly in Italian and then they would give a summary of what he said in various languages.  I think the order was French, English, German, Spanish (he did speak a little bit in Spanish also), Portuguese, Arabic, and Polish.  

There's a weird sculpture of Jesus behind the pope.

After seeing the pope, we had some free time until the afternoon.  So that's when I crossed back and forth between the Vatican and Italy numerous times.  I got lunch at Pizza Zizza right by the Vatican.  It was probably the best pizza I had in Italy.  Our dinners were paid for and they included wine.  I don't like wine, but I had a total of probably less than two glasses of wine during the whole trip.  Normally I wouldn't drink wine at all (it had probably been years since I last drank any wine), but I had some in honor of Jesus being a wine drinker.  But during my lunch at Pizza Zizza I got a glass of Birra Messina because I wanted to make sure I had some Italian beer during my trip.  Later in the day I had gelato at the Papal Basilica of St. Mary Major that was commissioned by Pope Francis to celebrate the miracle of the Roman summer snowfall on August 5, 358.  It had a lemon flavor with orange, ginger, and meringue toppings.  It was unsurprisingly not my favorite gelato of the trip, but I wasn't going to not have papal gelato.

This was good.  I found Pizza Zizza on Yelp.  I knew it was right by the Vatican, but not exactly where.  I happened to find it while wondering during my free time.

St. Mary Major had statues of the Apostles.  St. John was the reason I picked John for my confirmation name.

There's never been a Pope James, but there were two Apostles named James so that's pretty good.

Papal gelato wasn't bad, but I would definitely take flavors like (dark) chocolate, pistachio, caramel, and peanut butter over this.

The next day was another day in the Vatican.  We went to the Vatican Museums.  That was a little underwhelming.  There was lots of stuff to see, but it was so crowded (and this was during a time of the year that is supposedly not so crowded) and we were kind of rushed through.  You end up in the Sistine Chapel.  It is cool to be where the pope gets elected and look at the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, but again, it's really crowded and you get rushed through.  We weren't allowed to take pictures inside so I don't have any from there.  After that, it was time for St. Peter's Basilica.  That was really cool.  The thing I most wanted to see was the tomb of St. John Paul the Great.  He was the greatest person of the 20th century.  So now I've been to the tombs of two of the three heroes of the Cold War.  I was at Ronald Reagan's tomb in 2015.  And the third hero, Rocky Balboa, is still alive.  I was going to take a night off from gelato, but I had been texting John and he suggested looking up John Paul II's favorite gelato place.  I found out that it was Gelateria Giolitti and it was about a mile from my hotel.  So I went exploring to find it after dinner that night.  I got chocolate and blueberry.  It was good, but it wasn't my favorite.  I tried various flavors during my trip and my favorites were dark chocolate, pistachio, peanut (I guess it was called peanut instead of peanut butter because peanut butter is much more popular in the US than in Europe), and caramel.  So I might have just picked the wrong flavors this time.

He was the pope for the first 21 years of my life and the greatest person of the 20th century.

Much like Homer Simpson, I hate pants, but we had to wear them inside St. Peter's.

This was the gelato from St. John Paul the Great's favorite place.

On my last day in Rome, we went to the Colosseum.  The Colosseum held about 50,000 people.  Being there felt a little bit like being in a college football stadium.  It's not big enough to fit a football field, but if it wasn't in ruins, it would be a good place for Notre Dame to have their first ever Shamrock Series basketball game.  According to our tour guide, Christians were not martyred in the Colosseum.  The Romans definitely persecuted and martyred Christians, and Christians were probably killed in the Colosseum, but they weren't killed there because they were Christians.  Later on we went to the Pantheon.  It was a Roman temple and now it's a Catholic Church.  Rome was really cool and I feel like I could have spent more time there, but I got to do everything I wanted to do in Rome.

Other members of my tour group commented on the weird group of teams that I root for because I represented them all during the trip.

I think some of the other 206 Tours packages with Rome didn't include the Colosseum.  I definitely did not want to miss seeing it.

Here's the outside of what was the Pantheon.

And here's the inside of what is now the Basilica of St. Mary and the Martyrs.

The next day we were off to Assisi.  We were staying in Assisi, but visiting various other places for the next four days.  That was a more laid back day.  We stopped in Orvieto and went to the Duomo di Orvieto.  It's a church that took 301 years to build.  We had to take a tram to get up there because it's elevation is 1,066 feet.  The population of Orvieto is a little over 20,000.  So that was the first of several small towns that we visited.

I took this picture of Assisi from the bus.

These pictures are the view I had from my hotel room in Assisi.

Then it was my Sunday in Italy.  We had a priest in our tour group who said Mass each day in a different church, but for Sunday, we went to a regular Sunday Mass at San Michele Arcangelo in Bevagna.  So it was Mass in Italian.  I was able to figure out some of what was being said, but I read the readings in English later on.  I don't remember if I recognized it during the first reading or during the homily, but I figured out that it was the reading with Joshua saying, "As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."  Then we had some free time in Bevagna.  Bevagna is an old town with a population of about 5,000.  I got pizza that looked like it could have been from Chefs in East Northport.  I had a spinach slice and a regular slice.  They might have looked like Chefs, but they were not Chefs quality (the Spinach slice was decent, but both slices looked better than they tasted).

We stayed in Assisi the next day.  We went to the Basilica of St. Francis, which is where St. Francis is buried (we couldn't take pictures by his tomb).  The last two days were the best parts of the non-Rome portion of the trip for somebody who spent 13 summers working for the Franciscan brothers at Camp Alvernia and regularly attends St. Francis.  Brother Robert taught me the St. Francis quote "Preach the Gospel at all times; when necessary, use words."  And it was Brother Geoff who taught me that St. Francis never actually said that.  One of the things I learned on the trip was that there's a good amount more to the Vatican than what you would think.  Of course, St. Peter's Basilica is inside of the Vatican City.  But there are three other papal basilicas in Rome.  St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, and St. Paul Outside the Walls are all part of the Vatican even though they're not in the Vatican City. We visited each of those when we were in Rome.  There are several other places in Rome that belong to the Vatican as well.  So any time you go to one of those places, you're crossing from Italy to the Vatican.  And there are some other places outside of Rome that belong to the Vatican.  The Basilica of St. Francis is one of them.  We also visited the Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels in Assisi.  There was a golden statue of Mary and a dome on top so I liked it.

I was back in the Vatican at the Basilica of St. Francis.

You see Nativity scenes in Assisi because St. Francis invented them.

For lunch in Assisi, I went to a restaurant that was supposed to have really good lasagna.  I had lots of pizza, various kinds of pasta, and gelato, but I wanted to make sure I had some lasagna in Italy.  It was a white lasagna, so there was some sort of white sauce instead of a tomato sauce.  It was very good, but I suspect I would have liked it more with some sort of tomato sauce.  And speaking of food in Italy, the food in general was good.  It was the best food I've had in another country.  But I wasn't overwhelmed with the food.  Living in New York, I could get Italian food that is pretty comparable to what I had in Italy.  Anyway, it was a good day in Assisi.  Of all the little towns I visited, that was the most interesting one.  It's this old Medieval town.  The original town is on a hill inside of Roman walls and then it has expanded beyond that.  To get to my hotel, we had to park the bus outside the walls because the roads are too narrow.  We had to go inside the walls and then walk up a big hill.  And then we would enter the hotel on the third floor and I would go down to my room on the second floor.  The population of Assisi is about 28,000 and the elevation is 1,391 feet.

The last day in Italy we went to Gubbio and La Verna, where St. Francis received the stigmata.  It's also where the Franciscan brothers got the name for Camp Alvernia.  Gubbio is a town of about 33,000 people at an elevation of 1,713 feet.  La Verna up in the mountains at 4,209 feet.  After a week of 90-95°, it was nice to be up in the mountains with temperatures probably in the high 60s or low 70s at La Verna.  La Verna is in Tuscany.  As a Seinfeld fan, I was reminded of Bob Cobb trying to keep Jerry out of Tuscany.  George guessed that Tuscany was the size of North Dakota.  Tuscany is about eight times the size of North Dakota geographically with almost five times the population.  It's very close to New Jersey's size geographically, but New Jersey has about 2.5 times the population of Tuscany.  Anyway, the background that they used in Seinfeld for Tuscany did look like it could actually be Tuscany.

La Verna was a much different setting from all the other places I went to.

I don't see any houses to rent.

I had to wear my Camp Alvernia shirt to La Verna.

Italy and the Vatican were amazing.  I'm glad I finally went.  Of all the countries I've visited, I would want to go back to Australia the most.  But it's so far away that I probably won't go back and that's okay.  The place I'm most likely to go back to is probably Canada since it's so close.  I might go there next year since I have my passport renewed and go to a Blue Jays game (they renovated the stadium since I was there ten years ago) or maybe go to a minor league game in Vancouver if I can fit that in on a trip out West.  I would probably want to go back to Italy before England or Ireland, but if I was going to Europe again, I'd probably go to a country I hadn't been to before I would go back to Italy.  Poland and France are the ones I'd want to get to the most.  It would also be cool to go to Norway since that is Knute Rockne's homeland.  But I probably won't ever go to Norway.  Portugal, Spain, and Germany are other European countries I might consider going to in the future.  Other than that, the only other countries that I might ever think about going to would be Mexico (because of Our Lady of Guadalupe) or Japan.  Seeing baseball in Japan would be really cool.  I feel like the culture is so different though that I would be pretty out of place.  If I was going to take another really long trip (like more than seven hours on a plane), it might be a domestic one.  I would love to get back to Hawaii.  Pearl Harbor was amazing, but it would be cool to see places other than Oahu.  If I could see some sporting event in Hawaii, that would be awesome.  I felt pretty comfortable in Italy.  Speaking English was not a problem at all in Rome.  In the smaller towns, it was a little more hit and miss, but it wasn't too bad.  As one of our tour guides pointed out, Americans have it easy since people speak English all over the world, but the only people who speak Italian are Italians and opera singers.

I thought about all the Italians who came to America over the years.  They must have been disappointed to leave behind the beautiful churches.  The scenery was really cool with lots of mountains.  New Jersey seems like it would be disappointing in comparison.  But it actually reminded me a little bit of Southern California with the mountains and similar weather (it was hot and they said it pretty much doesn't rain in Rome during the summer, but it was probably more humid).  On the other hand, the tradeoff for the beautiful churches was churches with air conditioning and more comfortable pews and kneelers.  I don't mind heat much, but when you're walking around Rome all day and it's 93°, it gets a little rough.  The restaurants and my hotel were air conditioned, but the churches didn't provide any relief.  But the churches were very impressive.  I lost track of how many we went to.  It was eight days and probably an average of around four different churches per day.  Sometimes there were churches that were literally less than 100 feet from each other.  Long Island is pretty densely packed with Catholic churches, but finding two Catholic churches within a mile of each other is unusual (actually I teach at a parish school and there’s another Catholic church a mile away).  Manhattan has some places with Catholic churches pretty close together, but it’s probably a few blocks apart instead of on opposite sides of a little square.

So that was my trip to Italy.  I’m probably done with traveling for 2024.  It doesn’t look like I’m going to get out to Notre Dame for a football game this year (I’m not ruling that out completely, but it’s not looking likely).  As for 2025, I might go see some Notre Dame sporting events this winter and/or spring.  We play hockey at Wrigley Field.  I've seen us play outdoor games at Fenway Park and Notre Dame Stadium so Wrigley Field is a possibility.  I haven't been to a Notre Dame basketball game on campus since 2016 so I might try to do that.  And I might try to go to a baseball game since I was unsuccessful in my attempt in 2024.  And I'm sure there will be traveling for baseball in 2025, but I haven't given that too much thought yet.  It was a pretty good summer even though I saw the Dodgers play terribly in Los Angeles and I missed out on going to Boston because I got sick.  Italy and the Vatican definitely helped make up for that.