Sheep Guarding Llama

Our first day in Rome, Italy.  We were so tired that we all slept until about three in the afternoon!  A full twelve hours of sleep. Boy were we exhausted.  This is what thirty hours of travel plus seven hours of jet lag will do to you.

We got out the door and walked up the street to see the Colosseum.  It was already getting dark by the time that we were getting there.  It’s winter and Rome is decently far north so the sun was already getting low even though it was not all that late.  Travel in the winter is difficult.

We discovered that even in the cold, off season, in the evening that the streets of Rome are packed full of hawkers trying to sell any junk that they can to you, mostly selfie sticks and phone battery chargers or plastic light up figurines.  It’s awful.  It immediately makes me dislike being out and about in Rome.

We did our walk but the girls were thirsty because they had planned poorly so it was right back to the apartment.  Dominica was very impressed by my ability to navigate around town.

Before getting all of the way back we stopped at a little corner shop just outside of the apartment and picked up a few snacks.  The girls were really hungry and we have nothing at the apartment for them to eat and it is hours until it will be dinner time.

We spent maybe two hours back at the apartment.  The girls had cereal and biscuits.  That held us until it was time for actual dinner.

For dinner we had been recommended to check out Ai Tre Scalini by the girl that rented us the apartment.  That was a good walk to the north a few blocks.  It was chilly but not horrible.  The girls were quite tired of walking by the time that we got there, though.

The restaurant turned out to have rather a large line, we were the six table waiting to get in.  But we had walked a ways and it was evidentally popular so we decided to stick it out.  It was eight when got to the restaurant and it took about forty five minutes before we were able to get seated.

While we were waiting we got to hang out with a nice young couple from San Diego that we had a nice time with.  They were two tables ahead of us.  After they were seated we talked to a group of girls from NYC that are studying in Italy right now.

Dinner was excellent.   Luciana discovered that she adores eggplant parmesan.  It is new her favourite food.  All of the food was excellent.  It was Dominica and me who had ordered eggplant parm, but Luciana stole it from us.

We got some desserts, too.  Luciana and Dominica got Italian cheesecake which is kind of like a cannolo in slice form.  Liesl tried a chocolate salami which was interesting.  I went for the Italian classic of anise biscotti that I dunked in moscato dessert wine – so good.  I used to have that when we were in Italy five years ago; I have missed it.

After dinner we just walked back to the apartment.  We were all very tired and wanted to get to bed on the early side.  It was probably ten when we got back and we did a little but were in bed around midnight.

Not a very intense first day, but we have a lot of jet lag and travel time to overcome.

We arrived in Oslo this afternoon.  Our flight last night went well and the crew from HiFly was excellent, probably the best crew that I’ve ever flown with.  They really went out of their way for us.

Going through immigration took forever, it always seems to in Norway.  Our customs agent told us that many European countries have individual immigration deals with the US and that those supersede the Schengen Visa status so if we looked into it and knew what we were doing that we’d be able to potentially stay in Europe for closer to two years.  This requires some research.

We had hours to kill at Oslo airport so we camped out in the food court area for a while, then we moved up to O’Leary’s where we ate two years ago, the last time that we flew through Oslo.  The wait there was pretty long, but we managed to eventually get a shared seat with a woman from northern Norway.  She had a big booth and was all alone.  She, of course, had to ask us about what we thought of Trump.  The “Trump Apology Tour” has officially begun.  We’ve not even left the first airport yet and we are already being asked about it.

Luciana tried her first fish and chips here and liked it.  She did a good job eating it.

From our lunch it was time to head to gate E15 and wait for our flight.  We ended up getting delayed by about an hour and a half because the crew was late.

The flight from Oslo to Rome was just two hours and forty minutes.  Not bad at all.  No movies on this flight, but everyone slept, even I nodded off a little bit.  The flight was actually cold so I had a blanket on me most of the time.

We arrived in Rome later than we had planned but not too bad.  Dominica had arranged with the people renting us the apartment that we would be late so we were all set.  No immigration to deal with as we did that in Norway so this was very fast.  Rome’s airport got our luggage out super fast and the girls had a playground in the luggage area to keep them busy while we waited on the luggage.  What a great airport.

We got a station wagon taxi for seventy five Euros that took us to our apartment.  Dominica was impressed by my ability to talk to the taxi driver in Italian while we drove.  It was only about thirty minutes.

Our apartment is right next to the Colosseum right in the middle of everything.  The taxi ride took us by nearly everything as we came into town.  We saw Vatican City, the Circus Maximus, Palantine Hill, Trajan’s Column, the Colosseum, the forum, the capital and tons more.  Unbelievable.

Our host was waiting for us at the apartment.  It’s a one bedroom, not a studio like advertised so even better, very small but comfortable.

It was midnight when we got into the apartment.  I immediately set out and found pizza to bring back for everyone.  I easily found a place around the corner and brought back half a pizza which Dominica and I loved. Luciana was not very interested, she wanted something with less cheese.  Liesl tried it but did not like it.

And off to sleep.  We are so tired!

This is it, it’s “go day.”  So much to do.  We were awake around seven thirty and put in a few hours getting the final packing and electronics testing done.  We discovered that our GoPro Hero4 Black was damaged (we can tell that someone at a party hit it against a brick wall!!) which is a major problem since we use this while we are traveling.  Not what we wanted to discover on the morning that we were setting out for a six month adventure in Europe!

It was maybe eleven when we finally got out onto the road.  It’s about a six hour drive to the airport.  In the car we did hours of research on video cameras, stores and what are options were along the path to the airport.  That took up a large percentage of our drive time.  We ended up deciding that we could not get an Osmo+ like we wanted before this trip and just have to hold that off until our next set of adventures.  For this one, we need to find a GoPro Hero5 Black.

We ended up stopping at the Best Buy in Vestal and picking up both a GoPro Hero5 Black as well as a GoPro Karma Grip for it, which is a digital gimbel.  That triggered our credit card to lock up so we were stuck there for a while getting that released, as well.  Always something to keep us on our toes.  We also found some cool new stuff for the girls including new Pokemon watches that they bought for themselves and a new Pokemon case for Liesl’s Nintendo 3DS New XL.

Back on the road, we drove straight on down to Brooklyn.  There was a lot of traffic as it is Sunday evening and New York City always gets crazy on a Sunday evening.

We got to JFK in good time.  Dropping off the car was quick and easy.  The drop off was right beside the Enterprise shuttle to the airport so we were able to load right up and be on our way.  We have learned to get two luggage carts to move all of our stuff around; that makes things actually manageable.

Getting checked in to our flight presented a bit of a challenge.  Norwegian customer service tried to claim that our kids did not get a full luggage allotment and we thought that we were going to have a really tough time.  Not a good start to things.  But we got that mostly resolved (and contacted their central customer service) and got through security and off to our gate without too much problem.

Our flight today was a Norwegian flight, but operating by HiFly, which we found out early this morning.  So we did not know what to expect.  We got underway on time, though, and the flight was decently comfortable.  It was not the Boeing 787 Dreamliner that we had been scheduled for, but instead was an Airbus A340.

The girls and I got the middle section, as usual, and Dominica got to sit on the other side of the aisle.  We had very limited movies to watch during the flight, but at least there was something.  Both girls started watching Rio.  Liesl watched it once and then started it a second time.  Luciana’s movie didn’t work properly and she gave up.  I watched Rio, The Grand Budapest Hotel, She’s Funny That Way and I started watching Home which was so painfully awful that I had to stop watching it and could not finish it, even on an airplane.  It was that bad.  The other movies were much better with Budapest Hotel being the big winner, quite an interesting movie.

Everyone except for me managed to sleep some on the flight, which is good as this is the red eye to Oslo.  Tomorrow is going to be a very hard day for all of us.

This is it, our last full day in the US for the next six months.  We are heading to the airport first thing tomorrow morning in our rental car and will be flying out towards Norway tomorrow night out of New York City.

I was the first one up this morning, followed by Luciana and Dominica.  Dominica’s first adventure of the day was over-stuffing her suitcase until it blew out.  So we have to locate more luggage today in order to be able to travel.  Always some new problem for the globe trotting family.

Dad was not feeling great today, so just the Millers went to Geneseo to get lunch at the Omega Grill.  After lunch we went shopping at Walmart and picked up a new suitcase, the silver iFly, to replace the one that Dominica killed this morning.  The new one is a few inches larger so we will have a little additional packing space (but no extra weight) for this trip.

We dropped the kids off at the house; dad was feeling a bit better.  And we went up to the city to pick up our rental car from Enterprise at the Rochester Airport.  It was about five when we left the house, our reservation was to pick up the car at six.

We got the car, it ended up being a Dodge Charger which is functional but a really crappy car.  It has zero power, not the best visibility, looks ridiculous, drives mediocre, has poor controls and is one of the silliest interiors ever and has rather poor interior space leaving us struggling to be able to get the luggage into a car significantly larger than cars like the Ford Focus that fit the luggage easily.  A very impractical car, for sure.  But it was cheap.

Once we had the car we decided to have a date since this was our last time having a babysitter for maybe six months!  We went to Red Robin as I have never been there before.  Dominica has told me how good it was so I figured that I would try it out.  We got there and there was quite a line.  We got seated and then waited forever for what turned out to basically be mediocre fast food.  It was fine, but the veggie burger was just a BOCA burger that we could make at home for about one dollar and ten minutes.  Not ten dollars and ninety minutes.  And the restaurant makes a big deal about “bottomless” French fries which just means that they are not very good and brought in ridiculously tiny quantities and no one ever comes to check on you again so after you’ve sat there for an hour kind of hungry and wondering if there is another restaurant that might actually care to feed you, you give up and go home and they act like they would have brought you more fries had you waited a few more hours.  Overall the food was meh and the service was pathetic.  I’ll never eat there again.  I’d rather get “plenty” of French fries up front rather than wait forever to not get “bottomless” ones.  Clearly just a scam, which is what I suspected with anything bottomless.  Basically, it was a bad version of McDonald’s.   Cost more, takes way longer, food isn’t as good.  If you are in Rochester and want a burger, go to Wahl’s.  Skip Red Robin.

From our rather unimpressive final dinner in the US (just a strong reminder of how much better things will be shortly) we went back to the house.  Dad said that the girls were really good all evening, even Luciana.

Packing stuff and off to bed tonight.  We leave for New York City in the morning!

We get only three days at dad’s this week.  Today is Friday and we are halfway through our time “back home” before we are off to Italy.  This morning I actually set up my laptop in the kitchen and started working on catching up some.  I did not even bother to get online yesterday at all.  So I spent much of the day writing and posting.  There is a lot to do before we are heading out of town this weekend.  This week really threw us for a loop and we are not very well prepared for all of the upcoming travel.  It does not feel real that we are just days away from heading to Italy.

On top of everything else, Europe is caught in the grip of a massive cold snap that has caused scores of deaths and has the BBC describing southern Italy as looking like Siberia.

Liesl is still feeling sick this morning but Luciana has gotten over her cold and fever.  I still have my cold, but am improving.  Hopefully it will not be all that bad by the time that we go to fly.

Dad made grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup today.  Luciana ended up loving her grilled cheese and ate a whole, huge sandwich all on her own.

Dominica got our car prenotated today for the weekend.  We have a car from Enterprise that we will pick up from the Rochester airport on Saturday and drop off at JFK in Brooklyn on Sunday.

We did panic credit card management today.  Always stupid things that we need to address at the last second.  We remembered that I needed to renew my International Driver’s Permit this afternoon, so I quickly drove up to Pittsford to go to the AAA office there.

Only took a few minutes and less than $32 to get my IDP.  Now we are all set for the year.  We have learned our lesson with that in Spain when we were there with Rachel and she was unable to rent a car.

I stopped at Root 31 and picked up coffee for Dominica and myself.  Real coffee, more like we will be getting in Europe in a few days.

Dominica wanted me to get food on the way home, so she sent me to University Hots in Geneseo to get our last garbage plates of the season.

I brought dinner home then we watched some more travel videos on YouTube while we ate dinner.