Europe: Day 3 in Rome

Today, Sunday, we joined another tour group for a quick trip out to Tivoli. About an hour outside of town, it used to be the hot spot for the Popes and for Rome's richest to hang in the heat of the summer. Although our weather has been utterly fabulous, not too hot at all, we still took the trip.

Villa d'Este is fabulous and the gardens are to die for. Fountains everywhere. Kids were snapping photos right and left, so be sure to ask for detailed descriptions when they get home. We had lunch in Tivoli and then headed back to Rome.

In town our first stop was the Spanish Steps. We set everyone free to enjoy the steps, shopping and/or the beautiful day. Most chose to walk back to the hotel (which is a fairly long walk but with great sights and sounds.)

We met for dinner at 6:45 and headed to RomAntica. We arrived at 7:00pm as scheduled, but we somehow came as a surprise to the restaurant cause I'm telling you they took FOREVER to bring dinner. I thought I was going to start chewing on a chair leg. Luckily the first course arrived just in time. By the end, as always we were all rolling around and totally full. In the end, dinner was delicious and 3 courses as always. The food just keeps coming out. After dinner we strolled over to the local and famous gelato place near our hotel.

We depart in the morning at 8:00am for Assisi before heading on to Florence. It should be a long day on the bus, but we have a great hotel in the middle of things in Florence, so that will be great.

Traveling Day

Sitting at the gate I worked a good 15 minutes trying to get Internet without having to pay T-mobile 8 bucks. THAT didn’t work, so no posts until now. Sorry.

Malcolm remarked early on that the terminal was a hot bed of excitement. . . ok, so we started slowly to allow the energy to build ; )

I twittered a little about our time on the runway. Apparently, the brakes were too hot and that is not ok. So, we got to sit as the brakes cooled off. We just sat, and sat and sat.

After a nine hour flight, we arrived in Frankfurt. I did a quick survey and very few of us were able to sleep on the plane. The seats were uncomfortable and the plane was a bit chilly. Most of us are walking around like zombies at the moment. We sat around for a while before landing in Rome. But you knew that.

What you didn’t know is . . .

Our pilot was a chatty fellow to say the least. He droned on for ages in German and then switched to English. He told us about how long the trip would be, and the different parts of the United States that we would fly over (and I mean he was very specific about exactly what we would be flying over). He told us about the 3 hours over the Atlantic, and he told us about our flying over the island of England.Most of this was almost impossible to understand even after he had switched to English.

Upon landing in Rome we were greeted by our tour guide, Kathy, and our bus driver, Antonio. They took us to the hotel first thing.

We regrouped and headed out to St. John Lateran and the Scala Santa . The kids then had a little bit of free time to wander to another church, see a park and grab some gelato.

We are meeting for dinner at 7:00pm in the hotel, and then we'll head out for the evening's entertainment. (if you are a better, place money on the "going out for more gelato" option!)

(There are photos which I will hopefully get posted later tonight.)

Perkins