Home > Travel > Europe > Italy > Rome > Rome Attractions > V Rome Attractions
Once in a life time oppurtunity Review with images 57 of 57 Ciao Users found the following review helpful
Rating from ScottishWestie 5 Stars ()

Advantages Surreal, limited crowd

Disadvantages Getting there

My brother in law is Italian & his name is Giuseppe, for the past ten years he has worked & lived in England but previous to that he lived & worked in Rome, Italy.
This meant that we often travelled to Italy for family holidays & Giuseppe would take the time & trouble to show us around his proud city. He started by taking us to all the tourist attractions & then followed by places the tourists know little about. Each time we visited them it was like a challenge to him to find something more interesting. On one visit in 1990 he exceeded all expectations.

He secured four tickets to see the Pope in the Vatican for a private audience on a Wednesday morning! Giuseppe & his family are all Catholics, however I'm not, in fact I'm not that religious but I do have the utmost respect for people & their chosen religion.

The ticket is actually dark green & all written in Italian
My immediate thoughts were a private audience with the Pope would be a room with four of us sitting down answering questions from the man himself about our holidays, how's the dog & such like! In actual fact a private audience is around 500 people from all over the world in a hall on the ground floor of the building the Pope uses as his official residence. This is carried out most Wednesdays.

The tickets are free, however they are very difficult to obtain, they are sent all over the world including the U.K. to Catholic leaders who decide on their allocation.

The tickets which are coloured dark green (one is badly pictured) state on them:

PREFETTURA DELLA CASA PONTIFICIA

Permesso personale per partecipare ll'Udienza del Santo Padre che avra luogo in Vaticano, nell'Aula Paolo VI, mercoledi 7 febbraio 1990, alle ore 11.

The only stipulation was you had to be respectively dressed & be on time, if you arrive just seconds late you are not permitted entry.

At 9' o clock that Wednesday morning the four of us set off from 10 miles south of Rome in a little Fiat Uno & made our way to this 'once in a lifetime' opportunity.
The late Pope John Paul II would pull in a bigger crowd than our Queen & the U.S. President combined.

As we travelled through the horrendous traffic jams in the outer districts of Rome it was soon becoming evident that we weren't going to make it on time. Even driving like a typical Italian, Giuseppe wasn't making much progress.
We jumped queues, jumped lanes, went down 'rat runs' & slowly we made progress arriving in the Vatican with about 10-15 minutes spare, however we couldn't find a parking space!

Well you know the old saying, when in Rome do what the Romans do, so we did! He parked nose into the kerb with the front wheels on the pavement & the back of the car sticking out into the busy traffic. We were desperate!

We decided that if he gets a parking ticket we would all chip in to cover the costs. We all then ran & arrived in Vatican Square with just seconds to spare.

Each ticket is allocated a seat number & just as we found our seats the doors closed, no one else would be allowed in.

Rate this User Review

How helpful was this review to you? Rating guidelines

Attention, this is the first review from this author

Instead of giving a negative rating, consider:

  • Help this member by giving your advice

  • Report fraud (for example plagiarism) or other issue with the review to the Ciao support team

Activate low rating buttons

Add your comment

 Post comment  Post comment

JavaScript should be enabled to rate or post a comment.

Comments

Maybe you have a question about Vatican, Rome? Ask here
Previous page Next page Page 1 of 12 | 1 - 5 out of 58 comments
  • supercityfan 23/02/2009 13:01
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • Expired-Account 22/09/2008 23:22
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful

    Wow, I think this is a must see, great review

  • gemsarchitect 14/09/2008 21:00
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • TheNew42 14/09/2008 18:26
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
  • Bigbaz 17/08/2008 20:25
    Rated this review as
    Very Helpful
Previous page Next page Page 1 of 12 | 1 - 5 out of 58 comments

More reviews

for Vatican, Rome

Compare prices

for Vatican, Rome