Roma: Day 1

Well, we have safely arrived in Rome… after a nice and almost too short flight because neither mom nor I could sleep very much. We did watch Ocean’s Thirteen and I listened to the In flight Italian twice, but not sure I have retained anything yet. So we were picked up by this guy holding mom’s name and whisked away into the city- mom and I were holding hands because we thought we might die in this one car ride. Apparently we have arrived in Rome in the middle of a Taxi strike, so there is a tremendous amount of traffic and apparently tomorrow (Friday) there is an all public transportation strike, which means we will be walking everywhere- which we were planning on doing anyways, except that the Vatican is somewhat far from where we are staying near the Spanish Steps. We made it to our hotel and decided to take a quick nap before we went out to explore, except we were so exhausted that we ended up sleeping for 4 hours! We still made it out though for a few hours in the afternoon to explore, see a few sights (like the Fontana de Trevi) and a few Piazza’s that we stumbled upon; mom lost her sense of direction, we recharged the cell phone and found a nice place to eat that was a bit pricey. Mom ordered a Coke Light (diet coke) for 5 Euro’s and I had tea for 6 Euro’s- holy crap… no more drinks for us! That was more expensive than a bottle of wine, so from now on, we will just be drinking alcohol! Our hotel is very cozy on a one way street that is quiet and nice. Here are some images from our travels so far: