Pope Francis slipped out of the Vatican on Thursday evening to make a surprise visit to an optician in Rome to get a new pair of eyeglasses, insisting that his old frames be reused and that he would pay for them.

The Pope was driven to Ottica Spiezia in Rome’s fancy Via del Babuino in the small Ford Focus car he normally uses, drawing a large crowd of curious tourists and Romans outside, footage on Italian television showed.

He had told me to use the old frames again because he did not want to spend a lot of money and insisted on paying for them

The shop owner, Alessandro Spiezia, who has made eyeglasses for the Pope before but always delivered them to the Vatican through aides, said he did not know that the Pope would come to the shop himself.

“He had told me to use the old frames again because he did not want to spend a lot of money and insisted on paying for them,” Spiezia said on Italian television.

The Pope arrived with one of his secretaries, a driver and several plain-clothes police officers. He remained inside the shop for about half an hour as Spiezia explained the use of the new eyeglasses to him. The Pope then greeted crowds outside before returning to the Vatican on the other side of the Tiber River.

In an interview with Mexican television last year, the Argentine Pope said that since his election in 2013 he missed being able to walk around Rome alone and that he particularly missed not being able to go out for a pizza.