Sometimes a vacation was a semi-mandatory thing, when you head out to see your boyfriend, since you live in very different countries, and sometimes, those vacations aren't necessarily in the same country you pick him up from.
Amelia knows that leaving Lithuania and making a mini-tour of Europe is not the typical idea of a date, just ask her, but it's a kind of date that works for them. While away from the local restaurants that Toris often takes her to, when she visits, and away from the forests that they walk through hand in hand sometimes, they aren't away from the sheer joy of being together, of walking side by side.
Naturally, Italy is way different than Lithuania in a lot of ways, and yet, there's this little spark of adventure, and this special kind of joy that follows them around as they enter from Rome to the Vatican. Another country, technically, but still very much a part of Italy. It's packed right now, shoulder to shoulder they go, trying to glimpse up at the Papal balcony, in hopes that Pope Francis will walk out on it and greet everyone here, though there's no actual plan for that to happen.
It would be spontaneous if so, and undoubtedly an answered prayer, but right now, it is time to wander down the very streets that offered safety for many, many Jewish people that would make their way from Italy to the "neutral" zone of the Vatican, a place that was a sanctuary for others that otherwise would have been heavily abused under oppressive regimes.
It's a gentle surprise to know that these were also the streets that have housed many homeless people, that now live in a home for the homeless within Vatican City. It's still a refuge to people to this day, and for Amelia and Toris as they walk from the entrance to the Churches within the city, it's a sanctuary, though not one protecting from a warring Europe nor one sheltering those without a home, but it is a place of peace despite the heavy crowding today.
And as they walk hand in hand, it's a beautiful opening up of the world for them, a great chance to really look around them and see the beauty within the world through the beauty of history and of architecture and of faith, that surrounds this small country.