Last week I bought out the Vatican. Granted, it was for one night only, and the Pope wasn’t part of the package, but for a few hours the most crowded museum on the planet belonged to 25 of my Yonderlust Travel guests and one very patient security guard.
I am writing this on the final day of our fall Rome, Amalfi, and Naples tour, my fourth time hosting this trip. We have visited the Vatican every time. This time was different.
Over the years we have bought out a royal palace in Portugal and taken over the Doge’s Palace in Venice for a private night visit. The week before Rome, in Santorini, we bought out an entire hotel for our group. None of it was done to impress anybody. Every bit of it was done for the guests.
This whole thing started by accident. For years, readers asked me to take them to Tuscany, to eat in the restaurants I had written about and meet the chefs behind them. I figured I would do it once, so I made a Facebook post.
The trip filled up in an afternoon. By that evening there was a waiting list, and before long the waiting list had a waiting list.
Those first guests came home and asked one question. “Where are we going next?”
So we went to Venice, Bologna, and Milan at Christmas. They asked again, and we came to Rome, the Amalfi Coast, and Naples. They kept asking, and we added Spain, Sicily, Greece, England, Scotland, Ireland, Scandinavia, and a few places we haven’t announced yet.
As the map grew, we leveled up the trips. We used to stay in four-star hotels. These days it’s mostly five-star hotels and one-of-a-kind properties, with experiences that take people a little out of their comfort zone.
Though the hotels got nicer, the biggest change has been access. Anybody can book a hotel room and buy a museum ticket online. Very few people can buy out the Vatican.
My first visit there was in 2011, during our six-month trip through Europe with Jill and the kids. We booked a night tour, and even with several hundred other people in the halls, there was a different energy after dark. When you’re trying to level up a night tour at the Vatican, there is only one place left to go. You buy the whole thing.
For a long time, I ran Yonderlust like a mom-and-pop side project. Back home it was a two-person shop, my executive assistant, Simeon Williford, and me. Over here I have great boots-on-the-ground partners in Marina Mengelberg in Tuscany, Bill Thompson in Scotland, and Jesse Marinus everywhere else in Europe.
The demand kept growing, but the two of us back home were running out of hours in the day. Earlier this year I brought in Brittany Nicholson as director of Yonderlust Travel, and the business finally got the attention it deserved.
People had asked me for years to bring back our Mississippi tour, and I had always wanted to do one in New Orleans. We did both this year, and both had waiting lists. The credit goes to the two ladies in that office.
There’s no magic to the number 25. When I hosted my first tour 10 years ago, both villas we rented held 25 people, and I’ve kept it there ever since.
Jill and I do not do group travel. It’s just not our thing, which is why it took me almost 10 years to figure out why these trips never feel like group tours.
It finally hit me last year. We share three meals a day. When you sit across the table from someone at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, you learn about their children, their grandchildren, and the things that truly matter in life. By day three, folks from all over the South (and a few strays from the coasts) are passing around pictures of each other’s grandbabies.
Now put that table inside the Vatican after hours. We had two great guides, so we split into two groups, with one security guard trailing behind us.
The Gallery of Maps is probably my second-favorite room in the building. I have always been fascinated by cartography and amazed that people mapped the world with little more than the stars and a few primitive tools. On a normal day, guards herd the crowd through, and you barely get a glance. This time we took our time.
When we reached the end, the guide asked me if I wanted to turn the S-shaped knob and open the door leading to the Sistine Chapel. It took me aback. I had no idea that was an option.
I turned the knob, opened the door, and was the first one into the most crowded room in the Vatican. It was completely empty and dead silent.
People say “I’ll never forget it” about everything from a wedding to a great plate of fried catfish. I mean it this time. I will never forget the faces of my guests as they walked in behind me, many seeing that room for the first time.
Michelangelo spent four years, from 1508 to 1512, painting more than 5,000 square feet of that ceiling and over 300 figures. He came back 24 years later, at 61, and spent another five years on “The Last Judgment.” That is the same room where the cardinals elected Leo XIV last year. For about half an hour, it was ours.
Afterward, we had dinner in the Cortile della Pigna, the courtyard named for a giant bronze pine cone the Romans cast almost 2,000 years ago. Vatican staff served the meal, and the food was mid, at best. Still, it might have been the most unique dinner we have ever had—= in the still of the night, in the open air— minutes after walking out of the Sistine Chapel. Trust me, nobody sent anything back.
I have been in the hospitality business for 45 years. Restaurants, columns, books, television, and now travel all come down to the same thing. Someone trusts you with their time and their money, and your job is to make sure it was worth it.
I am grateful to every guest who has ever handed us their vacation, to Brittany and Simeon back home, and to Marina, Bill, and Jesse over here, who make me look a lot smarter than I am.
People are still asking where we’re going next. We’ll do Mississippi and New Orleans again, plus one California trip north into wine country and another south through Big Sur and Carmel. The one I’m most excited about covers Maine, Nova Scotia, and Prince Edward Island. If history is any guide, the waiting lists will have waiting lists.
Tuscany is the most popular (and probably my favorite), and the reason we have guests who have been on 100, 11, even 12 Yonderlust Travel trips.
When dinner was over, the guards asked me if I wanted to be the one to close the door for the night.
“Does anyone ever say no to that?” I asked.
“Actually,” one of them said, “we’ve never asked anyone.”
I opened the first door of the night and closed the last one. That has been the job for 45 years— open the door, get everybody in, feed them well, and send them home with a story. The Vatican just has bigger doors.
Onward.
Apricot Tarts
The brown butter in the recipe gives these tarts a unique and appealing flavor.
16 pre-made mini frozen tart shells
Filling
3 /4 cup butter
1 1 /2 cup apricot preserves
1 /4 cup honey
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup dry apricots, chopped small
2 eggs
3 Tbl flour
Preheat oven to 350
Par-bake the mini tart shells for seven minutes.
For the filling, melt butter in a small aluminum sauce pot and cook until the butter begins to brown. Stir in preserves, honey, vanilla, and dried apricots. Remove mixture from heat.
In a separate bowl, combine egg and flour and beat until smooth. Slowly add the hot butter mixture, stirring constantly. Fill the tart shell and bake 12 minutes.
Cool and serve topped with Chantilly Cream.
(Robert St. John is a chef, restauranteur and published cookbook author who lives in Hattiesburg, Miss.)
