Today Vatican City...

Yesterday's snow was frozen solid this morning. Walking was treacherous yesterday, today it was lethal. We took a taxi to Vatican City and found that the Sistine Chapel was closed. Next stop was St. Peter's Square. The church was open so through the metal detectors and across the square to the church. Cobblestones and ice what fun! Walking like a couple of new born penguins we finally made it into St. Peter's. I was not prepared for the visual onslaught of beautiful statues, paintings and sculptures. I wished my head could do a 360 to take everything in. The other thing that surprised me was how connected I felt being there. After so many years away from the church I thought it would be awkward or as if I was trespassing in a place I no longer had the right to be in. That certainly was not the case. Pam, was raised Church of England, mentioned how comfortable she felt inside the church. Once back outside we left the square to find a coffee and just relax. We found a little cafe just outside the wall of the Vatican. After enjoying a rest and cappuccino we were going to head back to the hotel. As we were leaving a man from the cafe said "Hurry and you can see the Pope if you go now!". Back across the road and to the square, that had been nearly empty when we left it, was now packed with thousands of people! We were literally in the cafe for no more than 40 minutes, we could not figure out how all of these people suddenly appeared in the square. Then we hear this voice, first in Italian then in English, it was the Pope giving a blessing to the crowd. A blessing of healing. Here we were receiving a blessing from the Pope and yet we had no clue that it was about to happen! Okay, so maybe the Sistine Chapel and Colosseum were closed but how many can say they were in St. Peter's Square for a blessing by Il Papa? Talk about being in the right place! I guess today's moral of the story is good or bad every experience is still an experience and what may seem like burden can suddenly change into a blessing. In our case the latter being a literal blessing.