11. Into The Heart Of The Church.

As we made our grand entry into the premises of the St. Peter's Basillica, it was inevitable not to pay homage to the souvenir shops before making it to the grand sanctuary, the ultimate object of our visit, since we 'walked into' the premises of St. Peter's, as opposed to 'drove into it'. We browsed through and bought some made-in-Rome rosaries and other religious trinkets. We also made some prepayments for some pontifical certificates with papal blessings which the shop attendant promised to send to our respective home addresses after having them signed by a papal representative. The lady in attendance assured us that we'd get our certificates by the time we reached home. As it turned out, the lady who served us was a Malaysian from Perak who, she claimed, had been working in the Vatican premises for the last couple of years. She told us that there were other nationals around, particularly the Filipinos, who'd all been working there without any visa. Suzanne rolled eyes giving me the ideas that the PTI back home must be conjuring in her mind. Actually, to be fair, as I found out later, there was no visa requirement to work within the premises of the Vatican city.

As we proceeded to the main building of the Basilica, we saw a guided tour group whom we promptly followed. As it turned out, they were on their way to the top of the Dome. We took our queue for the lift which invoked some nostalgia of a similar queue I had at the K. L. Tower. The lift stopped at the base of the Dome from where we had an advantageous and marvelous view of the entire interior of the Basilica. From there we walked up an intricate staircase formation leading to the highest part of the dome, meanwhile intimating to Suzanne to check for our names scribbled during my earlier visit, among the myriads of graffiti along the length of the staircase. We were not so lucky in our search.

It was a bright sunny day, so when we reached the pinnacle of the Dome, we had a marvelous view of the whole city, as far as the eyes could see. We could see the Amphitheater, the Colosseum, the hotel we checked into and, of course, the entire Vatican state and the residences therein of which one, with its unique architecture and size, must be that of the Holy Father, so Suzanne opined. We never did get any confirmation. I couldn't help noticing that the Vatican state was the only green patch within the entire geography of the city.

We spent the rest of the evening roaming the part of the city in the vicinity of our hotel especially looking for a restaurant that serves food agreeable to our palates.

The next morning we retraced our journey back by train to Geneva where we parted company - Suzanne to her college at Laussane while Andrew and yours truly to London for our long flight back to Kuala Lumpur on a Malaysian Airline System.