two backpacks and a diaper bag

Saturday, April 28. Vatican City and Castel Gandolfo. Today was our longest day ever. We left at 6:30am and came back at 7:30pm. 13 hours of not-always fun adventure. We visited St. Peter’s Basilica and did the Full Day Plus with Train Tour from the Vatican Museum. Let me say that we don’t recommend this if you’re traveling with children who need flexibility in scheduling.

According to a very limited information online, we were supposed to check in at 8 at the Vatican to go around the Museum and the Sistine Chapel. Then at 10, a walk around the Vatican Garden with an audioguide. The walk was to end at the Vatican train station where we would board the train and head to Castel Gandolfo, the summer residence of the Pope. More on that later. At 12:30, we would tour the Papal Residence (with an audioguide again), have a free time from 1:30 to 3:30, tour the Barberini Garden on an eco-friendly vehicle, and then take the train back to Rome at 5:24.

It happened like that, more or less.

The tour is offered only on Saturdays. The Castel Gandolfo’s residence is newly opened to the public because the current pope decided to open it up to the public as a museum. In the past, you couldn’t visit the residence. If the pope decides to make the residence into a home again, then it would be, once again, closed to the public.

Since we would need to be at the Vatican at 8am and we would only return to Rome in early evening, I thought we should visit St. Peter’s Basilica before we go to the Vatican. This meant that we would visit it when it opens and we would leave our place at 6:30.

We did just that. We left the apartment at 6:30, called a cab using mytaxi app, and we were at St. Peter’s Square by 6:40. There was not a lot of traffic that early in the morning. It was really nice, actually. The city was quiet.

We arrived at the Square around 6:40. It was empty. Much more peaceful compared to two days ago when we were here in the afternoon.

From the Square, we walked to the security check line. While walking there, Arthur fell asleep by himself in the car seat. Wooooow!!!

At 6:45, there was already a long line at the security. We went through with no problem. It took around 10 minutes to clear the security.

Then we walked towards the Basilica. Before we went up the stairs, another security personnel stopped us and told us to leave the stroller and the diaper bag in the bag check. Arthur was still asleep. We didn’t want to bother him. We asked if we could bring it up anyway because the baby was asleep. They said no. So we decided to wait a while.

After 15 minutes of waiting, we decided to take him out of the car seat anyways. I would carry him, and hopefully he would still be asleep in my shoulder.

Sean pushed the stroller to the bag check as I made my way up to the Basilica. At the top of the stairs, Sean joined me. Then, we entered the Basilica.

We walked towards the Pieta first.

As we walked away from it and towards the front of the church, Arthur slowly woke up. He looked so disoriented. I don’t think he was ready to wake up. It was, after all, 7:15 in the morning.

We spent another 20 minutes walking around the Basilica. The place was grand. Everything was massive!

When we were outside, we took a picture of the empty Square.

Then we picked up the stroller and exited the way we came in. There was an exit right by the security check. Most people would exit to the right of the Basilica, but the way we exited would make the walk to the Vatican Museum much shorter.

It took about 15 minutes to walk to the Vatican Museum. As we approached the building, there were Vatican Museum workers directing which part of the sidewalk people should take. One part was for those who needed to buy a ticket, and the other part was for those who already had online reservation. Sean and I talked about how we thought they were tour guides touting their services. We only realized that they worked for the Vatican when we looked at their badge.

We walked all the way to the front. There were so many people queuing up in different lines. There were also tour groups bunched up close to the entrance. We had to maneuver our way through all kinds of groups in order to get to the front. And then we saw the sign for online reservation entrance. There was no line for that. I showed our reservation voucher copy on my phone and the security guard let us in. If we hadn’t pushed our way to the front, we would have waited behind the tour groups incorrectly. It was only 8am but there were already so many people. I wondered what would have happened if it was later in the day.

When we entered, we had to, once again, go through security. Thankfully, this was quick.

Then, we went to the “Tour” window. We picked up our tickets, then we waited in another line for the audioguide. With the audioguide, they gave us a red sticker. The only direction they gave us was to walk around the Museum, and then at 10am, we would need to be at the entrance to the Vatican garden.

After we got the audioguide, we stepped aside to change Arthur’s diaper. Then we took the elevator down to the main floor, crossed the lobby, and entered another elevator to get to the exhibition entrance.

Once we officially entered using our tickets that we picked up at the tour window, I sat down to feed Arthur. Then, instead of taking the escalator up, we walked on the ramp, spiraling up. We walked and walked and walked. It wasn’t even a pretty walk.

At the top, we saw stairs. I didn’t get it. After all that walking up the ramp, we had to go up a set of stairs? Well, it turned out there was a ramp hidden behind the wall, next to the bookstore. We took it.

Then we followed the sign to get to Sistine Chapel. Only stairs. No lift. I carried Arthur on the carrier and Sean carried the stroller combo up the set of stairs.

So, to get to the Sistine Chapel, we had to walk through all the other galleries first. Along the way, there were many stairs. I felt so bad for Sean. Not only did he carry the diaper bag, but he also had to carry the stroller/car seat combo.

And after all that climbing through the different galleries, to get to the Sistine Chapel required us to take the stairs down. The walkway was quite small, too. And there was a tour group right in front of us. It was getting a bit annoying, to be honest, to walk up all those stairs just to go down again. If there was a wheelchair access, we hadn’t found it, and the guards who had witnessed us going up and down the stairs didn’t think it was important to tell us.

Then, the Sistine Chapel. No photos.

More stairs inside the chapel. Sean “parked” the stroller on the side for about a minute but then the guards told us we couldn’t leave it there. We had to walk around with it. Fine for us.

Sean suggested to put Arthur to sleep in the Sistine Chapel since it was quiet and somewhat dark. I thought we should do it once we get to the garden because I didn’t know how many more set of stairs we had to go through in this museum.

In hindsight, we should have just put Arthur to sleep there anyway even though there were still lots of stairs from the Sistine Chapel to the garden.

The walk from the Sistine Chapel to the garden was really long. That was unexpected. Partly because we didn’t have a map of the place. We should have looked for a map because the one they gave us to accompany the audioguide was not good. That one only showed a list of highlight exhibitions, without a location.

There were more stairs leading down to the exit and to the garden. We passed by a book store on the way to the garden. There was a quiet space for us to put Arthur to sleep. He fell asleep quite quickly on the car seat. Once he fell asleep, we walked to the garden and sat on one of the benches. It was only 9:10am.

At 10am, people started to gather at the entrance to the private garden. They called for the red stickers. From the description, we thought we would be able to take our time walking around the garden. That way, should Arthur wake up on our way to the train station, we would be able to meet his needs.

We were wrong.

When they asked for the red stickers, we thought we would begin the journey and they would let people inside in waves. Unfortunately, that was not the case. We showed our stickers and they let us in. Ten steps later, we queues behind other red stickers. We waited there for five minutes.

We moved forward for another 10 steps. They were letting the yellow stickers in and they needed more space so the red stickers had to move forward.

Arthur started to wake up. He had slept for an hour by now and it had been two hours since I fed him last.

We waited there for another 10 minutes before the gate to the private garden opened. However, it wasn’t a free and easy walk around the garden. We were herded by two Vatican guards. The front person would stop every 5 minutes, called a number for us to input into our audioguide, waited for 2-3 minutes until the last person in the group caught up, and then continued walking. He would often remind us to not walk ahead of him.

Arthur was getting antsy. We took him out of the car seat and I wore him as we continued to walk with the group.

I couldn’t really sit to feed him. Maybe I should have.

Around 10:50, we finally got to the Vatican train station. I had been bouncing Arthur side to side and distracting him from crying. I thought, “We’ve made it. We could now sit on the train and I could feed him and put him to sleep.”

Not so easy.

We stopped yet again. This time, we needed to surrender our audioguides, and of course, wait for the stragglers.

Arthur started crying. I tried to feed him while standing. He wouldn’t have it.

He continued on crying. He was starting to get angry. It was my first time seeing him frustrated.

I looked at the guard, hoping he would allow us to go first. He just smiled and said we would go in shortly.

Two minutes felt like forever with a crying baby who would only stop crying intermittently.

When we finally got on the train, the guard told us we could sit right by the door at the wheelchair section so that we could park our stroller. I sat down and attempted to feed Arthur. He was too upset. Sean took him and tried to calm him down. It worked just enough for him to want to latch on. He was still whimpering but at least he was cooperating. People who were getting on the train couldn’t help but stare at us as we tried to calm him down.

As we left the train station, Arthur fell asleep. We placed him in the car seat and we, too, tried to take a nap. According to the TV screen on the train, we would arrive at Castel Gandolfo train station at 12:03pm. I didn’t know it was going to take that long. Oh, well.

The view on the way there got really pretty. Vineyards and open space… and finally, the lake.

Arthur woke up about 20 minutes before we arrived. He had only slept for 25 minutes. Not enough. We changed his diaper and played with him.

When we arrived, we followed the instruction to get off the train, up the stairs to exit the train station, and into a bus that would transfer us to the pontifical apartment. Having a stroller was a challenge, and having a baby who was moody because of his lack of sleep was definitely difficult.

When we finally got off the bus, we stepped aside to swing Arthur back to sleep. After that was successful, we walked up to the piazza. The next part was not going to start until 12:30 so Sean went to find quick food in the meanwhile. He came back with protein bars.

The next part was to visit the pontifical apartments. There were stairs leading up to the entrance, though.

We asked one of the guards and they pointed us to the exit. They said we could go in with the stroller and sleeping baby from there.

This meant that we bypassed the metal detectors. Nevertheless, we still had to get tickets. I stood in line to get the tickets by showing the ticket officer the proof of purchase on my phone. Sean stood near the security with the stroller and Arthur.

Once I got us the tickets, we showed them to the guards and they gave us the audioguides and directed us to the covered courtyard where various pope cars were parked. This was the beginning of the museum tour.

As we stood in the courtyard, a guard motioned us to follow him to a ramp. We followed him and he opened the doors to lead us to an elevator.

The elevator was too small for our stroller. We had to first take out the car seat and fold the stroller bassinet before we were able to fit everything inside. Thankfully, Arthur stayed asleep as we did all these changes.

He took us to the first floor and directed us to the beginning of the exhibition.

The audioguide basically took us through the various popes, explaining their origins, the type of popes they were, and the time they ruled.

In the third room, a man sneezed twice. VERY LOUDLY. Arthur was not ready to wake up so he woke up crying. We went back to the second room where there were seats. There were six chairs that were upholstered with red brocade. Three seats were occupied by other visitors. I sat in one of the other three open seats. 10 seconds later, a guard kindly asked us to stand as those seats were, apparently, not for sitting. (If they didn’t want any of the visitors to sit there, they should have put up a sign or put up a barrier like how they did it in the other room.) Sean and I asked if there was a place where we could sit and feed Arthur. He took us to the fourth room where there was a chair behind a pair of curtains. I sat there and fed Arthur peacefully. Arthur fell asleep again. This time, I decided to carry him instead of putting him back in the car seat.

I came out from behind the curtains and thanked the guard. He seemed to be quite understanding.

We continued our walk. The view from the residence was quite nice! We could see the lake from up here.

One of the guards had just opened the windows so we could feel the fresh air.

The first floor exhibition was quite short, actually. After a while, I was no longer interested in listening about the different popes.

At the end of the first floor exhibition, there was a place to drop off the audioguide. Then, there was a grand staircase leading up to the second level.

Sean carried the stroller and car seat combo all the way up.

At the top of the stairs, we entered the papal apartments. In the first room, a guard approached us and asked us to let him know when we were done so that he could lead us to the elevator.

These guards were much more attentive and kind compared to the ones in the Vatican City. Just saying.

The papal apartments look like the apartments in Schonbrunn Palace and Hofburg Palace, but with less bling and gold. I enjoyed the second floor better than the first. Maybe because there were fewer people.

Once we’ve walked all the way around, we approached the guard and he took us to the elevator. The guard who handled the elevator took us to the ground floor and personally took us to the exit.

We moved Arthur into his car seat. He was still asleep. Sean swung him around for a bit to ensure he continued to sleep. Then we pushed the stroller to the piazza and we looked for a place to eat.

We ended up at Trattoria Lo Spuntino. According to TripAdvisor, this was the #2 place in Castel Gandolfo.

It was a small place but we could still fit the stroller. We didn’t know we had parked it in front of the small toilet until someone pushed the door from the inside, hitting the stroller. Thankfully, Arthur did not wake up. We moved the stroller out of the way. The toilet looked like a closet.

Sean and I had pasta. It was good! Sean ordered their 4 Euro, 500mL house wine. Really good!

We had just finished the main course when a guy bumped into the stroller as he made his way to the toilet. To be fair, the stroller was closed up so you wouldn’t know there was an actual baby inside, and the place was quite small.

The bump woke Arthur. I fed him real quick and we continued with our dessert.

We really took our time in there. Sean even order another 500mL of the house wine.

Towards the end, the kitchen cooked something really smokey. I took Arthur outside as Sean finished his wine and paid the bill.

Once outside, we changed Arthur’s diaper, buckled him in the bassinet, placed the car seat underneath, and then we walked toward the viewpoint.

Right. I forgot my sunglasses at home.

Then we walked up to the village. Sean got gelato.

Then we took a picture at the piazza and made our way to the entrance of the gardens.

At the entrance, we had to once again get the tickets. I showed them the voucher on my phone. They scanned the voucher, printed the tickets, scanned the tickets, and gave them to me. In my opinion, it was a waste of paper and it wasn’t operationally efficient nor effective. Anyway…

We left the stroller at the side and got on the minibus with no windows. For the next 50 minutes, we drove around the Barberini Garden. The bus would stop at a specific place and the guide would yell out a number for us to press into our audioguide.

Arthur pooped a lot towards the end and started to complain. I would have preferred to walk around the garden instead of sitting on the bus, but it is what it is.

At the end of the tour, the guide offered to take us all back to the train station. It was only 4:30pm. We decided to get off the minibus to take care of Arthur. The guide said there would be another bus leaving the parking lot right outside the garden entrance at 5pm. We were fine with that.

We got off the bus, went back to our stroller, changed Arthur’s diaper, and walked back to the piazza in search of a toilet.

We went back into the palace to use the toilet. The guard there got confused. He said we were missing the bus back to the train station as it would leave at 4:40. We told him the other guard said it was leaving at 5. After a back-and-forth with his colleague and a call into his walkie-talkie, he said the bus was leaving at 4:50pm.

We went to the bathroom really quickly and headed to the bus.

On the bus, we put Arthur to sleep. Then at 4:55, the bus left.

We got to the train station at 5:15pm. The train was not there yet.

The train finally arrived at 5:25. We got on it and sat down at the wheelchair spot again.

We arrived back at Roma San Pietro station at 6:30. We used mytaxi app to call a cab. It took a while but we were finally on the way home.

It had been a long day.

We got Fatamorgana gelato one last time after the taxi dropped us off, and we walked home.

At home, we gave Arthur a bathand we got ready to go to sleep. We didn’t even have dinner. We were so exhausted.

I wouldn’t do this again with a baby. It was a 13-hour-day with no flexibility in scheduling. I was so glad to be at home at the end of the day.