The best chocolate bar I ever ate was one I bought from The Swiss Guard in Vatican City. During my deployment in 2000, we stopped in Civitavecchia, Italy. I didn’t want to leave the ship that day, the port was kind of nasty. There was all sorts of garbage and sewage floating in the water around the ship and the area of the port we were in looked like an industrial section. So, I decided to hang out on the ship one day and just take it easy.
While I was relaxing in my workspace, the Combat Information Center (CIC) or Combat for short, one of the officers walked in and asked me to give a tour to some VIPs. I didn’t want to at first, because I wasn’t on duty, but she persisted, and I gave the tour. As it tuns out, the tour was for some of the off-duty Swiss Guard from the Vatican. They enjoyed the tour and invited members of the ship to come to Vatican City the next day for a thank you tour. So, I decided to go along. How often do you get to see the Vatican?
We took the train from Civitavecchia to Rome and found our way to the Vatican. We were greeted at a side gate into the city and escorted by the same guard members from the day before.
We got to see just about everything. We saw Saint Peter’s Square, Saint Peter’s Basilica, the Sistine Chapel, the Rose Gardens, the train station that still had chunks of granite missing from it when it was bombed in WWII. The Vatican is a city/country unto itself; it even has its own currency.
We also saw where the Swiss Guard armed themselves for watch. We saw where they ate, where they slept, and where they lived. They’re hand-selected for this special duty and brought to live in Vatican City for a time, then they return home to Switzerland.
At the end of the tour, they offered us the chance to buy some chocolate from them. I bought a few bars to take home with me. I opened one and it was the most delectable, rich, smooth, creamy, velvety piece of chocolate I’ve ever tasted. I savored every piece of it, allowing myself only one small square of chocolate from the bar per day. I did finish one of the chocolate bars before deployment was over, saving it for the times when I desperately needed a pick-me-up. I saved one chocolate bar for home and shared it with my family when I got back, but that chocolate has haunted my dreams (in a good way) ever since I first tasted it. All other chocolate is garbage compared to this chocolate. I have never found it’s equal, and trust me, I try often! lol.
I’ve actually been back to Rome and the Vatican one other time since this first trip, but I wasn’t able to get back into the Swiss Guard’s living quarters to see if I could buy more. I’m not sure they’d appreciate some random guy just waltzing in and asking to buy chocolate from them. They carry halberds to protect areas of the Vatican from would be ne’re-do-wells. It’s quite impressive when they uncross the halberds as you walk towards them and then re-cross them after you’ve passed.
This post inspired me to check out if they have a website and…THEY DO! They even have a shop where they sell memorabilia, alas, there is no chocolate for sale on the website. As I recall, the chocolate they could purchase for themselves was a special treat that wasn’t openly available to the public.
Here’s the official website for the Swiss Guard: Päpstliche Schweizergarde: About us
More information on the Swiss Guard: Swiss Guard – Wikipedia
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