Day 3 - Boarding the Boat - August 6

(pics to be added when we get home)

This was my favorite morning, and one that made me want to stay for a much longer period of time, in Rome.

We woke up fairly early because we had to make our way back to the airport.  I booked transfers from the airport to the cruise ship because it was an hour and a half drive, and this was just about the cheapest way to get there.  But before we did that I wanted to wake up and have some coffee at a café, and have a nice little pastry.

We got up and dressed pretty quickly and were on our way.  I previously looked up a location close to the hotel we could walk to, and that’s just what we did.  We mapped our way to a cute little café that turned out to be a chain.  They had great coffee and wonderful pastries.  Shawn had two mini cannoli, and I had a chocolate croissant.  

After our brief café visit, we stumbled upon a fruit market and purchased some fresh fruit – a peace for me, and a nectarine for Shawn.  Then we meandered a bit around a couple of the streets where people were selling shoes, and some clothes, then made our way back to the hotel to gather our belongings.

We packed fairly quickly, grabbed a taxi and headed to the airport, but not before almost forgetting to empty the hotel safe containing about $700 American dollars.  Thankfully I remembered just as we were walking out the door of the hotel and grabbed it before officially checking out.

We caught the taxi to the airport, and almost immediately got onto our bus to transfer to the ship.

Coming on the ship was a pretty cool experience.  Shawn and I are not novices when cruising.  I think this is cruise number twelve or fifteen for us – we’ve lost count.  But this ship is amazing.  It’s HUGE!  Like SUPER huge.  The central area of the ship is about 3 stories high and is magnificent.  This ship also has a dancing fountain water feature on the main deck at the top, and has bars all over the place.  The other difference of this ship is that it has a massive buffet.  It has three or four aisles of food to choose from, and with over 3,000 people aboard, I can see why that is needed.  

The cruise line gave us the perk of an all-inclusive drink package, which means that all bottles of water, cans of coke and ALL ALCOHOL are included the first week we are on board the ship.  My comment to Shawn last night after my forth glass of wine was “oh, this could be dangerous”.  We’ll see.  I usually don’t drink back to back days at home – my body can’t handle it with all the walking I usually do, but we’ll see how this cruise pans out…..

In the evening we made our way to the back of the boat where there’s a bar and met some pretty cool people from Utah and Australia.  We chatted with them for a couple of hours (thus the multiple glasses of wine), then had dinner.  

The plan for tomorrow is to go see the leaning tower of Pisa, but the kicker is that we have no plans of how to get there.  We have a fun saying these days that is holding pretty true:  “fun adventures with Carol”.  It means Carol has no plans and we just pretty much see where the day or experience takes us.

So tomorrow our plan is “fun adventures with Carol” time.  I’ll keep you posted…..

Day 2 - Rome in a day..... - August 5th

(pics to come after we return home)

Rome in a day……

Buongiorno! 

We woke up pretty early our first day in Rome.  Actually, it was our only full day in Rome, so we wanted to pack as much in as possible.  We had tickets to the Vatican Museums for 12:30pm, and wanted to see pretty much everything before that, and Shawn made that happen.  

We started out by catching the shuttle from the Waldorf Astoria to town.  We then walked by a café close to a university and had cappuccino – one of the best cappuccino’s I’ve ever had.  After my very quick morning pick me up, I was ready for the day.  We walked from the café to the Spanish steps, which were closed, but we took pictures anyway.  They were doing some restoration of the steps by filling in micro cracks and small chunks that had fallen away over the course of time.

We then headed to the Coliseum, and on the way we stopped by Trevi Fountain.  That was pretty cool.  But again, they were doing some light ‘housekeeping’ by sweeping up the massive amount of money in the fountain.  We hung out for a bit before heading onto the Coliseum.  

Holy crap!  There TONS of people there.  From what we learned later, it’s not normally that busy there.  We just happen to come to Rome on a very busy day.  The Coliseum was pretty awesome – large, old, crumbling – everything you’ve ever watched on the Discovery Channel.  

From the Coliseum we went towards Palantine Hill near the Forum.  As an aside, we had eaten no food, only coffee for me, and it was about 984% humidity and approximately 85 degrees.  We were walking pretty quickly to get everything done in a decent amount of time, and by the time we got to the hill, we were pretty spent.  Both of us were dripping sweat and chugging water, but it wasn’t nearly enough.  Trying to recover from the time change, and walking over 7 miles while in Rome, we thought we were pretty close to death while climbing a decent hill – with no breeze – dripping sweat – with no food.  Get the picture here?  It was damn near miserable – except we were in Italy, y’all.  That was the only redeeming factor.  Well, that and the historical aspect of it all.

Moving on……  After we trudged down Palantine Hill hear the Forum, we walked to the Pantheon.  This was a pretty cool experience.  Not temperature cool of course, but an awesome experience to be able to sit in the Pantheon and reflect for a little while.

From there we walked to Vatican City where we were directed to walk around the outer wall and to the museum entrance.  We had wisely pre-purchased tickets, otherwise we would have stood in a que for nearly two hours.  We should the gorgeous Italian guard…or was he policia?  I can’t remember, because O-M-G!  The Policia here are freaking adorable.  Like models, adorable.  I know I’m minimizing these gentleman based on their looks, but holy crap – the younger (30-something) guys look like they are straight out of a magazine.  Back to my point…..we showed the guard our e-ticket and were directed right in.  For the first time all day we were in air-conditioning and there was a bathroom.  An actual bathroom.  Cause y’all, those are a little hard to come by in Italy.  

The museums were packed to the gills with people.  I’ll spare you the details of the Sistne Chapel, but it was pretty damn awesome.  After winding our way through the museum, and through the troves of people, we finally made it into the main area where the Hand of God was giving life to Adam.  It – was – breathtaking!  The Policia wouldn’t allow pictures, and to my shame, I snapped some secret pictures.  I had to.  This was God.  Giving life to Adam.  As depicted by Michelangelo.  IN THE 1500’s!  There’s no way to explain that experience. There’s just not.

From there we walked through the Vatican Museum which was also amazing.  But nothing, in my humble opinion, can compare with God giving Adam life.  

By this time it was nearly 1:30pm or 2:00pm – things were pretty hazy because we were so exhausted and famished, so we made our way to the cafeteria in museum area.  We had some pasta, yogurt and some much needed water.

After leaving the Vatican we just couldn’t walk anymore, but we pushed on to visit a local grocery store to purchase some items for an al fresco dinner.  We purchased yogurt, fresh mozzarella, salami, prosciutto, strawberries, fresh baked bread and a few bottles of water.  We had decided after lunch, and after walking over 7 miles in the heat, sun and horrid humidity, that we were done for the day and wanted to stay in for dinner.  Thankfully, we did.  We were spent.

Once we got back to our hotel we collapsed and fell asleep for a few hours. By the time we woke up, we snacked, relaxed and called it a night.

Day 1 - August 3rd-4th

Today was the day our bucket-list trip began.  We left for the airport at around 8:30am.  We said goodbye to our newest roommates, Stacy, Caleb, Allana and Pepper, and of course our super squishy kitty named Sir Shadow Kitsington.  Thankfully Stacy was kind enough to take car of the cat so we could go on vacation.

After coming back to the house twice, I think, we were finally on our way.  We got to the International Terminal, waited our requisite 3 hours to board our flight, and made some new friends.  We met two older women, likely in their 70's who's names I can't quite remember.  They were German, not surprising since we flew out of Lufthansa Airlines.  We talked about nationality, where I was informed that I do not look Italian at all, rather German or Polish.  This comes as no surprise as my sister got her 23 and Me results back and our ancestry is approximately a million percent northern European.  Somewhere along the lines someone lied about *actually* being Italian.  So even though we identify most with our Italian side, we have nearly no Italian in us.  Whatever, long live pasta!

Once we boarded our flight we figured out that we were sitting next to the most frazzled Latvian man who's name I also can't remember.  He smelled distinctly of onions and a mixture of musk and body odor.  I will never forget his scent, especially because I was sitting in the aisle seat, Shawn was in the middle seat, and Mr. Latvia sat at the window, and he insisted on crawling over us while we were still seated....over and over again.  The dude got up constantly, and finally at one point, simply gave up coming back and stood in the middle of the airplane chatting up the folks walking by engaging everyone he could.  The gentleman was one of the nicest people we have ever met. 

We learned that he lost his beloved wife 5 months earlier and was taking a trip to visit family and friends.  But what had him frazzled was the fact that he left his newly purchased phone in the airport somewhere and was not able to retrieve it.  He asked us many times what time it was, which we kindly obliged.

The flight was long, especially since there were a number of babies who decided to have an epic screaming match.  No lie - I've never heard babies scream so loud for so long.  In short, no sleep was to be had.  Leg #1 was over 11 hours, and we did not sleep.  We decided it was ok because Europe, y'all.  We were headed to Europe, so sleep was an afterthought.  It was an afterthought until it wasn't anymore and we could barely keep our eyes open after our connecting flight in Germany.

Thankfully the second leg of the flight was short, and the plane only half full.  However, this flight also had more babies who liked to scream, and scream loudly they did.  We quickly gave up on trying to sleep.

After we arrived in Rome we needed to get to our hotel.  We booked a room at the Waldorf Astoria which was approximately a half hour away.  As soon as we retrieved our luggage, a nice Italian man decided he was going to transport us to the hotel.  He grabbed our bags and helped us to the garage.  Except this man was from a private transport company, and not 5 minutes earlier I had read a notice in the airport that only white cabs should be taken.  All other 'cabs' were not regulated and should be avoided.  So while this man was wheeling our bags, I turned to Shawn and said, "if he does not have a white cab, we're not getting in".  Sure enough it was a black car.  I looked at the man and politely said without skipping a beat "I'm sorry, we can't take this car - it has to be a white taxi.  We will not get reimbursed unless it's a white taxi".  With that, we turned on our heels and headed back to the taxi station.

I internally applauded my ability to handle foreign situations with ease.  Having traveled to Kazakhstan, Peru, Russia, Mexico, Canada, Central America, and most recently, Beijing, I have a weird ability to take notice of my surroundings and handle foreign travel with ease.  Shawn simply stayed silent and went with it - that's all I could ask for.

Before we left the airport we made sure to ask if Visa and Mastercard were accepted.  The driver assured us it was, thankfully, since we had no Euros.  Once safely to the hotel we had to settle the cab fare. The driver tried to run our credit card but his reception was bad.  We tried to exchange dollars for Euros, but the hotel wouldn't do it.  The driver tried to run the card again to no avail.  The ranting and arm waving then began........  I'll spare you the details, but he paced, ranted and made sure to let everyone around know that he was unhappy.  I heard to the word "work" in Italian a number of times, and a few other choice words.  Thankfully the hotel had an ATM machine where we were able to get Euros and sent the nice cab driver on his way.

The hotel was amazing, and the pictures online don't lie.

We settled in, but only to shower and head back out. The hotel provided a shuttle to the downtown area, which we happily partook.  We were famished and needed to eat, so we sought out pizza and bottles of water.  That's really all we had the energy for after such a long day.

After dinner we caught the shuttle back to the hotel and settled in for the night, but not before the hotel delivered us a bottle of champagne and truffles.  It was awesome, but we were too tired to drink alcohol, so we saved it for another day.