Italy - Day 1 - Get a Little Perspective

We made it to Rome!  Not sure what to expect as we deplaned, but the signs we fairly descriptive and universal.  When all else fails, follow the crowd.  There were long lines at customs, but it moved quickly and efficiently.  Made our way through in about 15 minutes.  Caught a quick tram to baggage claim and after a moderate walk to carousel 10, just like magic off roll all of our worldly goods.  Now if only we had a clue as to how to find our shuttle to the hotel.  I caved in and called the contact number.  Took me a minute to figure out how to add the "+" sign in front of the number for an international call.  Talked to a nice lady and she gave us good direction to our shuttle.

In the above picture we are waiting to get on the shuttle.  The folks in the background are from Dallas (a family of 6) and are on our same tour.  There is another family of three sitting right across from Pat who are also on our tour.  Turns out they are from Columbia, MO and the elder is the same lady who tried to steal Pat's neck pillow on the plane. Small world. 

We take a 45 minute drive to our hotel.  It's about 10:30 in the morning and, as expected, our room is not ready.  We leave our luggage at the hotel and decide to take a walk with some of our fellow tourist.  Turns out the original city wall of Rome is just outside our hotel.

We make out way to the Spanish steps, which I learned lead to the entry gate that Spanish immigrants passed through. 

 
We also had a lovely lunch at a sidewalk cafe.  Pat mistakenly thought pasta with olive oil and pepper referred to black pepper.  Nope:  Red pepper flakes.  It was much to spicy for her taste. 

We made it back to our hotel.  Our room was ready and our baggage was already in our room.  That's when I discovered this:

I had to flag down housekeeping to help me turn on the room lights.  You have to use your room key to turn on the lights.  What silly tourist we are.  Everybody knows that.  Right?  After a quick power nap, about 2 hours, we met our entire tour group in the lobby.  Our tour guide, Marco, engaged us in a cool icebreaker... he handed out name tags randomly and we had to figure who was wearing our name and whose name we were wearing.  It was a natural way to meet folks.

We walked a few blocks to dinner.  Pat and I dined with a young newlywed couple from Chicago. They are on their honeymoon and the husband works for Target.  Note to Brandon: he loves Target, but wishes Corporate would listen to the stores.  He's currently leading a remodel.  They are both vegetarians so Pat and I were overwhelmed with the amount of food left for us to eat... prosciutto, brochette, pizza, red and white wine, cheesecake and tiramisu, and espresso.

After dinner, we hoped on the bus and took an orientation tour of Rome.  We got bunches of picture to share, but I'll just share a couple here.  First is the Forum where all of ancient Roman society gathered.

The final picture is of what is believed to be the prison in which Paul and Peter were held prior to their martyrdom. 

Whew!  What a day.  Seeing all of this reminds me just how new I am to the space I occupy.  Love them or hate them, but our civilization is standing on the experiments of those who came before us.