"One Does Not Simply...Walk Into Vatican City."

"Blessed is he who has learned to laugh at himself, for he shall never cease to be entertained." - John Powell

You know the Rome from brochures and the Travel Channel, the one with pigeons and marble gargoyles and stone masonry engraved in Latin? It exists. As with the volunteer charity work I'd done in Ghana, Africa some years ago, I think I was surprised not to be surprised upon arriving here, to find a reality that perfectly matched what I'd seen on TV.

As a writer and hopeless romantic, I know as well as anyone that the best love affairs have tumultuous beginnings. Italy and I, we were falling in love. I'm not sure if it was all of Italy or just Rome. Either way it was a hard, fast plunge. Three days in and I'm no longer afraid of the city, though I probably should be, at least a little. I spend all day everyday roaming (no pun intended) in a state of perfect happiness. I literally do nothing but explore, eat, drink and write. Inspiration is everywhere I turn. I don't have to go looking for it the way I do at home, whether in the everyday indulgence of pasta or red wine or gelato, the ancient Roman aqueducts that spill clean drinking water onto the streets, or in the unmatched indescribability of Michelangelo's craftsmanship.

It stormed last night. My plan was to get up early and sneak out before my hosts woke up and force-fed me again. I slipped on my jacket and shoes in the dark and tiptoed down the hall to the apartment door, only to find it sealed shut by three different locks. Great, now they had locked me in, too. I returned to my room, not wanting to risk a walking cane to the head by sounding like a burglar trying to break in. Just as well, I thought as I lay down and closed my eyes again. It really was too early to go anywhere. I still felt exhausted and the sun wasn't even up yet. That's when I heard the thunder. A heavy downpour began to pelt my bedroom window. Sometimes things happen to you specifically so others don't. I quietly thanked the universe for keeping me warm and dry in my bed and let my breathing deepen and even out.

It was well past eight-thirty when I finally did wake, fully dressed under the covers with my coat and shoes still on. I slipped quietly past the back of Filomenia's bathrobe out on the balcony, where she stood sipping her morning coffee, and made a beeline for the cafe down the street where I'd spotted locals enjoying what looked like a quality cappuccino and cornetto the day before. It was worth it. Cappuccino-and-cornetto breakfasts are a dime a dozen in Rome, but Bar La Coccinella does it right. Like at any respectable Roman cafe, you pay for your order first at the cash register, then hand your receipt to the barista to have it filled. There are no tables. You drink your coffee at the counter and move on. No lingering. All business. Seriously delicious business. Capped with an absolutely perfect layer of foam and brimming with creamy, dreamy espresso flavour, Bar La Coccinella's cappuccino has effectively ruined Starbucks for me for all eternity. Their homemade cornetto, smaller than a French croissant and even more buttery and flaky in my opinion, wasn't bad either. Total cost for the best breakfast I've had in longer than I can remember: €2.

From there I hit the Internet cafe again to check my e-mail, then returned to the guesthouse and had - in true hobbit fashion - "second breakfast", so as not to offend.

And it's a good thing I did. That was the day I finally found the entrance to the Vatican, a feeling akin to discovering the magical door to Narnia. You know that huge stone wall I've been walking past everyday? Turns out on the other side is Vatican City. Go figure. While this at least explained why it was visible from my rooftop but not street-level, it did nothing to make me feel less stupid.

I followed a pair of backpackers up a set of ancient steps, figuring they must be headed the same place I was, and suddenly found myself face-to-face with a long line of what had to be a hundred tourists outside a stone archway marked "Musei Vaticani".

"Inglese?" An official to my left caught my attention.

"Si, yes."

He gestured to the group of twenty-somethings hauling backpacks behind me. "You are together?"

I shook my head.

"You are alone?"

I nodded.

"You want to skip the line?" He told me the first guided tour of the day was set to depart in fifteen minutes. It included admission to the Raphael Rooms, the Pope's Chambers, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. The price sounded reasonable, and I didn't even want to try navigating the confusion before me on my own, so I agreed and followed him to the tourist office. That was where I met Riccardo. He was a husky-voiced little Italian man with a tweed cap on his head and cigarette mount dangling from his lips. He spoke in heavily accented English, and had been guiding tours of Vatican City for almost sixty years.

Talking in the Sistine Chapel, he said, was impossible, and so launched into a preliminary explanation of its history before we left the office. Upon entering the Chapel, he said, "Words are not necessary. Only emotion is necessary." I cannot begin to express how I appreciated this concept. This was just another reason why I loved the Italians. What other culture put such a premium on feeling, on passion and pleasure, that they actually described it as necessary?

Riccardo took us through the preliminary exhibits - paintings, sculptures and frescoes too old and numerous to expound (even the floor mosaics were more beautiful than anything I'd ever stepped on in North America) - then the Hall of Maps, where twenty-foot-square tapestries depicted - some accurately some not - the various regions of medieval Italy. After that Riccardo shepherded us through the labyrinth that was the Raphael Rooms. With each successive chamber chronicling a different Bible story or historical tale through its mind-blowing assembly of paintings, it was the closest thing to the Sistine Chapel a traveller could show their loved ones back home, since pictures and videos inside Michelangelo's masterpiece were as forbidden as talking.

Approaching the entrance to the Sistine Chapel, Riccardo stopped and gathered us around him in the last room of the art gallery. "I am going to give you a gift," he said to us all, his throaty voice just above a whisper. "If you want, I advise you to not look directly at the paintings when you enter the chapel. Look at your feet instead. Then, when I say, you can look up. The experience will be better this way. I believe it is one of the most important emotions you will feel in your life."

There was a palpable hush at the threshold, and I was hit by a waft of cold, stale air. I kept my eyes on the marble under my hiking shoes until I heard Riccardo's command. "Okay," this time he did whisper, "you can look."

The Sistine Chapel, if you've never seen it, is a sight that will literally knock you on your ass. Raising my eyes to a ceiling that never ended, I was overbalanced by the weight of my daypack and my butt hit the floor. I stayed like that on my knees, my eyes still glued to the miracle above my head, until Riccardo came up behind me and hauled me to my feet by the underarms. "Happens all the time," he consoled, brushing off the back of my sweater.

Since "indescribable" seems a cliche way to characterize the Chapel, I'm going to do my best. The closest explication I can offer is this: it was either a cathedral made out of paintings or a painting made out of a cathedral - I couldn't decide which - with more vibrant colours than the human eye was built to take in at once.

Riccardo gave us fifteen minutes "alone with our emotions" before we had to meet him at the gate to finish the tour. In that time, besides the remarkable artistry I was encased in, like a pearl in the bejewelled inner shell of an oyster, I also stole a glance at my fellow tour-mates. There was a couple from Spain who looked like they might be on their honeymoon, a gay couple in their sixties, and a flat-chested woman with a bandana tied around her head. I thought about how this was a wonder most people never got to see in their lives, and those who did make a point of putting it on their bucket list often didn't until they were at least fifty. I was way ahead of schedule, and considered myself incredibly lucky for it.

I was starving by the end of the tour, which had lasted two-and-a-half hours. I knew from the maps I'd consulted yesterday that Gelateria Dei Gracchi, highly recommended by three different travel publications, wasn't far from here. This being Italy, ice cream seemed as respectable a lunch as any.

As we said our goodbyes, I asked Riccardo if he wouldn't mind pointing me in the direction of Via Dei Gracchi, the street the gelateria was on. Not only did he do that, he personally led me through the square and the maze of souvenir and snack booths to the intersection from which the via branched, easily a ten-minute walk. He also continued to point out other historical landmarks on the way, a guide, he said, even after the tour was finished.

A few blocks down the road, I found Gelateria Dei Gracchi without much trouble at all. It was smaller than I'd expected, as everything in Italy seemed to be. And, like everything I'd eaten in Italy so far, the gelato was, naturally, the best I'd ever had. I ordered a small combination scoop of pistachio and honey-walnut. Although it held its shape in the cone, the ice cream turned to liquid the second it hit your tongue, literally melting in your mouth.

Walking back in the direction of the Vatican, a woman in her thirties spotted me consulting my map on a corner, and asked where I was headed. I pointed to the street my guesthouse was on on the map. She took it from me, turned it upside-down to get her bearings, then pointed me in the right direction. As I thanked her and turned to go, I marvelled at the fact that, despite what I'd been told, I'd met more helpful people here so far than hurtful. I stepped off the curb, and was abruptly yanked from my thoughts by the woman's grip on my elbow, hauling me back off the street just as a tour bus sped past without so much as thinking about touching the brakes.

I had dinner with Cristina that night, a native Italian and Rotary connection my mom had set up for me. She picked me up at my guesthouse at eight and took me to an incredible local restaurant in Centro Storico, near the Spanish Steps. We talked over wine and an appetizer of eggplant milanese (believe me, if you haven't had it in Italy, you have no idea what eggplant tastes like). She apologized for not being more fluent in English. I assured her she was doing just fine, and told her how nice it was not to be speaking Italian for the first time in days. I also expressed how happy I was to be here, as hard as it was to believe after so many years of planning and saving and fighting off opposing relatives. "Nothing is impossible," she replied, "if you want it badly enough."

She said she wanted to introduce me not only to her cousin Alberto, who was a local Roman and chef, but also to a young man she knew through Rotary. "It would be nice for you to get to know some people your own age," she insisted, despite my assurances that people my own age usually drove me up the wall.

"What's his name?" I asked when she handed me a Post-It with his contact information.

"Marcello," she said, and I fired her a you're-kidding look. "Why?"

I sighed, reminding myself that Cristina had no way of knowing Under the Tuscan Sun was one of my two favourite movies, and shook my head. "No reason."

Our entrees arrived - beef filet for her and homemade pappardelle with beef-and-truffle ragu for me - and she asked if she could help me communicate anything to my Italian hosts.

"Maybe just one thing," I conceded. "How do I make them stop feeding me?"

"Ah," Cristina laughed. "That," she said, "is impossible."