|
|
|
On Friday, March
9th, my mother, my daughter and I left for the
Memphis Airport to fly to Detroit and then
Rome. We arrived in town early and shopped at
a local mall to kill time and arrived at the
airport 1-1/2 hours early. We were shocked to
find the International check-in line with one
clerk and approximately 30+ people in line
ahead of us. We made our flight only because
it was delayed 20 minutes to wait for a new
pilot! But, we did make our flight to
Detroit and when we arrived there we went
straight to our connecting flight to Rome with
no time to lose. The flight took 8 hours and
13 minutes and was 4,623 miles.
We arrived at approximately 8:00 in
the morning (Rome time) to a sunny sky and 60ish
weather. We found our Globus representative and
waited for another flight to come in and around 9:30
we were taken to our tour bus for the drive to the
city of Rome. I made my first purchase on the
bus and bought 20 Italian postcards for $2 American
(Euro was not in effect yet). During the
remainder of our stay we were approached with the same
packet of cards sometimes for $1. I hate to miss
a good bargain, but hey, they have to make a living
too!
|
|
I only used a few phrases, but the
most frequent one used and the first one I learned was
"Quanto"...How Much! "Grazie"
...Thank-you
was also used frequently!
Rome
is typical of any large city, crowded, lots of people and
oodles of cars and motorbikes. "I yi yi, how they
drive!" Our tour bus driver, Lino, who I might add
was very cute, was an extremely
good driver! However, as good as Lino was, even he
could not maneuver our large tour bus down the narrow side
streets so we had to walk several blocks to the "Albani
Hotel" in the heart of Rome. It was very
"Austin-Powerish", lots of pinks, greens and
other neon colors, but beautiful.
|
We arrived at the hotel around 11:00 a.m. and
were shown to our room. We rested for about an hour and
decided to go on our own "walking tour". We went
about 3-4 blocks from the hotel and found a small
delicatessen with homemade ice cream "gelato". A
rather cute, young man behind the counter could not take
his eyes off of Jessica. He waited on mom and I and when
we sat down told Jessica in broken English, "you have
beautiful eyes" and blew her a kiss! Jessica, being
16, had her day absolutely made for her. (I stand
corrected, almost 17).
| We
went back to the hotel and rested until our 4:30
meeting with our tour guide, Renata. She went over the
optional excursions and explained purchases and things
and people to avoid. She was wonderful and she covered
everything in a very informative and humorous manner.
We met a mother and another Jessica from Canada. I
think both Jessica's were glad to see someone their
own age (not that us adults would not have been fun!)
We then sat around in the lobby for a few minutes on
our way to our tour bus and our Welcome Dinner. |
|
Typical news stand you see (several blocks from
Albani
|
|
