Rome-ward bound!

We made it - Mom and I are now in Rome - wooohooo!!!  I can hardly believe it, but no, it's not a dream, we really are here in the Eternal City for a glorious week of being drenched in history and gorgeous Roman culture.

This will not be a very detailed entry, I fear...no sleep Friday night (too excited plus had to fill out a bursary application before I left cause an extra $1000 to this now poor student would be an awesome bonus and deadline is July 29 - wish me luck!)...no sleep Saturday night (rested fairly well on the plane, but never lost consciousness).  Which adds up to me about to crash and burn for the night!

As many of my real life and facebook friends know, I left my packing until last minute Saturday.  I have never packed in advance, why start now?  Everything I needed got in my suitcase in plenty of time, with only minimal "ahhh, what should I bring?" issues.  And no weight issues this time.  (Last trip, I packed, repacked and repacked my bag, trying to bring it down to the 23 lb limit...except it was really a 23 kg limit so I had oodles of room the whole time...obviously I will never live this down!)

The flight was pretty uneventful...although after setting off the metal detector in the Halifax airport, I now know that my sandels have metal shanks in the soles!  We arrived slightly early in Frankfurt for a 3 hour layover, where we had our first cup of espresso - yum!!  Upon landing in Rome, we had to sit out in the airplane for about 20 minutes because another plane was in our landing space.  But finally we disembarked, collected our baggage (which seemed to take forever, am sure ours were the last bags to be offloaded!) then we just walked out (having already gone through passport control in Frankfurt), found the driver holding the sign with my name on it, and away to the apartment we went!  The owner Elena met us on the street and showed us the ropes.  We are still getting used to having no keys, just coded access panels on the doors.  Elena rattled off the numbers so fast we had to get her to slow down and repeat them a couple times - our brains were in no shape to be remembering access codes!

Our apartment is wonderful - everything we expected and the view is stunning!!  It is on via Crescenzia (or something like that), a stone's throw from Castel Sant'Angelo.  The historic centre of Rome is just across the river, and we can see St. Peter's dome from our small balcony.  Here are some pics:

After settling in, we wandered around and had gelato (mix of limon sorbet, mango sorbet, coconut for mom, mix of nocciola, caffe, strachiatella for me - double yum!)  Then found ourselves by St. Peter's, so we went in...

And then, feet still swollen from the plane and jet lag kicking in...we came back to the apartment for a rest and a glass of wine (owners left a bottle for us), before going along to a nearby restaurant (Raf on via Plinio) for pizza and house wine.  I had margharita (sp) con bufalo - a deliciously messy pile of tomato sauce and buffalo cheese on a fabulous thin crust.  First piece with knife and fork, then once it cooled enough to handle, it was a hands on free for all! lol  I had been re-reading Eat, Pray, Love just before my trip and have been craving this basic pizza because of Liz's description of eating it in Naples.  Mom had cappriciosa (or a word something like that...also very tasty and much more filling since had many toppings.)

And finally...back to the apartment to end off the first day of our trip by sitting on our tiny balcony, enjoying our beautiful view, and basking in the glow of being in Rome...

Who knows what tomorrow will bring?!!