Sheep Guarding Llama

Thursday. GT2 Day Nineteen. Orvieto, Umbria, Italy.

The girls were tired this morning. So Dominica and I got up ourselves and went out for breakfast in Orvieto on the main shopping street. We looked around a little, but found that the place that we got sandwiches from last night seemed to have a nice breakfast. So we went there. We both ended up getting omelettes. Dominica got just cheese and I got veggie. These were some of the best omelettes that I have ever had. It was so good. Breakfast was out on a back garden, too, which was so beautiful. A great setting for a relaxing breakfast. It was already getting pretty warm, though, even at breakfast.

After breakfast we returned to the house and got the girls and brought them out for breakfast as they both need to eat first thing in the morning, more or less. Because everything was done with breakfast by then, except for the place that we were, we returned there for the third time in the last two meals. The girls got breakfast, but the garden was full or bathed in sunlight, so we sat at a table inside while they ate.

After breakfast, they decided to go straight to do St. Patrick’s Well (or properly Pozzo di S. Patrizio) which is probably the top thing for tourists to see when in town. This is a five hundred year old well that goes down nearly sixty meters (yes meters, not feet) with a double helix stairwell so that you have a continuous flow of “traffic” going down, crossing the well at depth, and climbing back up, all in one directly. It is huge, deep, incredibly historic, and an engineering marvel of its age.

On our way to the well we stopped at a little automat along the main road to get bottled water. It is so hot out already. Dominica grabbed me an aloe vera drink as well as my bottle of water. I drank the aloe vera quickly so that I would not have to carry it, along with the water and the camera, down into the well.

It was rather a long walk down the hill to get to the top of the well. A really long, hot walk. We did a little shopping on the way. Souvenirs and such.

When we got to the top of the well I suddenly got a really bad stomach cramp. But it was so far away form anything and it was time to go into the well.

St. Patrick’s Well was really amazing. First of all, it got nice and cool almost instantly. That was great. The whole thing is a continuous, slanted stairwell meant for donkeys to climb down which was pretty hard to walk down without stopping a bit. It was super neat. I highly recommend doing the well.

At the bottom of the well I was starting to feel sicker and Dominica recommended that I just head back on my own and not wait for them. I hesitated, but thankfully decided that she was smart and decided to do that.

It is worth noting here what we learned later. First that desalinization is one of the two forms of heat exhaustion. Second that aloe vera is a natural laxative. Over the past week or more it has been incredibly hot and I have been sweating non-stop all day, every day and intaking an incredible amount of water, but not really all that much salt.

It was a long climb sixty meters up out of the well. But that was not so bad. Much, much longer was the long hike up through town, which was all steeply uphill, not just to the top of the shopping district, but higher still to our apartment which is near the very top of town! I walked so fast that first I was drenched in sweat, but second I beat Dominica and the girls back to the apartment by a full forty minutes!

It took a few hours back in the air conditioning, and several cold showers, to get me feeling better. From what we can tell, I am experiencing heat exhaustion triggered by too much water and too little salt, exacerbated by the heavy hiking and the aloe vera. I felt quite sick for about four hours.

Once I was feeling better we decided to set out to go see the Orvieto Underground, as today is out day for seeing Orvieto and that is the next big ticket item to see. The girls announced that they were starved and needed to eat lunch before we got there. But there wasn’t any time to feed them, it was already pretty much a rush to make it to the last tour while we were in town. We rushed them out the door and down to the street of food as quickly as we could. We’ve been warning them days in advance about how all food decisions have to be made within the Italian eating schedule or else food won’t be available, and remind them at each meal about the next meal.

We really struggled to find any food for them and the only thing that they wanted were French fries, which requires going to a sit down restaurant and having the food cooked for them. Europe in general, and Italy more than anywhere, is not a “fast food” culture and in a leisurely tourist zone like this, just getting French fries is likely to take forty five minutes, when all we have is five.

They just couldn’t find anything to eat. Dominica finally found them some sandwiches and got them things that she thought that they would eat and fed them on the way to the piazza di duomo where we had to get to buy our tour tickets.

We got to the ticket office as they were issuing the last tour tickets of the day. We were technically three people beyond tour capacity, but we looked exhausted and they were nice and sold us four tickets, even though only one slot was left for the tour. We really did make it at the very last possible second. One minute later and we could have missed the tour and technically we did miss it and they just took care of us.

Once we had our tickets, we had about twenty five minutes to kill before the actual tour started. There was a little bar on the piazza that was convenient and had a view of both the duomo, which is awesome and we have not really gotten to see but I know it well from Rick Steves, and of where the tour would start. I got an Aperol spritz, which was very good. Dominica tried it and loved it. It is now one of the drinks in her drink rotation.

The tour got started at five thirty and was all walking. We walked down into three or four caves under Orvieto. It was really interesting and fun. A great tour and well worth it. It was not very long and you only saw a little bit, but it was very educational and cool. Something that you rarely get to see anywhere. Altogether there are like twelve hundred known caves under the city! We got to see real, underground dovecotes, too.

After our underground tour it was time for dinner. There is plenty of time since the tour was done a bit before it was really time to eat. So we used our available time to walk pretty much all of the streets of Orvieto where there are restaurants so that the girls could go over each of the menus. We did the entire town, then some again, before they settled on a little homey place with almost no one in it.

We got a table inside under a fan and were able to stay cool. This ended up being the first really authentic Italian meal that the girls have had of the trip. Madeline got a sort of spaghetti in meat sauce. Emily got lasagna. Dominica and I split a variety of bruschette. Dominica got gnocchi. And I got ravioli spinachi. Then Dominica and I split a pear salad. It was a great dinner. But we shut down the restaurant.

After dinner we wandered a little and then took the girls out for drinks to a neat little bar that we had found on a back street. There Madeline got some wine, Emily got some kind of fruity cocktail, Dominica got an Aperol spritz, and I got biscotti with wine to dunk it in.

We were all very tired by the time that that was done and walked back to the apartment to go to bed. Tomorrow we have to check out of our apartment here and drive up to Tuscany where we are going to be for several day.

Wednesday. GT2 Day Eighteen. Orvieto, Umbria, Italy.

Despite the insane level of heat that we experienced all night, I actually got a great night’s sleep. The best night’s sleep that my watch has ever recorded. Which I have only had for less than a month so that is hardly some astounding record, but my best sleep in a month is still pretty nice. Over four hours of deep sleep, and nearly five more hours of light sleep on top of that. The bed here and the breeze were really nice, even though it was so warm, and the constant noise of the busy city street outside is comforting to me. Of course, conditions that make me sleep well make it impossible for anyone else to sleep. So all three girls got terrible sleep last night.

We were up and ready to leave early. No one wanted to hang out in the hot apartment with little Internet access longer than we needed to. And we want to get to Pompeii as early as possible so that it will be as cool as can be.

The drive from the apartment to Pompeii was super easy, maybe ten minutes. Once they get the apartment completed with working kitchen and AC installed, we would highly recommend it for access to Pompeii. Very easy.

Pompeii was surprisingly easy to deal with. We found great parking for just ten Euros right by one of the entrances.

Pompeii was amazing. But it was so hot that I could not do the Rick Steves’ Audio Tour that the girls were doing. I need my ears free for cooling, and the sweat would short out any headphones. So I just walked along and looked at everything and plan to do the tour later, but soon while the site is still fresh in my mind. I have the tour loaded up on my MP3 player, I just decided that it was best to save it for later and just focus on looking at the site while I am here.

There are no words to really describe the scale and impact of Pompeii. It is just huge, sobering, and amazing. I can’t recommend it enough, but I also can’t recommend enough doing it on a cool day off season. The crowds were heavy, but not horrible.

We put in three hours at Pompeii which was about all that we can do in the heat. If it was not so hot and the crowds were a bit thinner, I could easily spend a full day or more there. But as it was, I was glad to be going. I am sure that we will be back here when Liesl and Luciana are bigger.

We left Pompeii and were too hot to get food. We got our car and got on the road and were straight on our way to Umbria. Today we didn’t make the same mistake as yesterday and used the A1 tollway across Italy which moved very quickly.

On our way to Orvieto we went past a rest stop on the tollway that had a Burger King and decided to stop as the girls were hungry and finding food that makes them happy is hard to do. It was an easy stop. And the service was great, and honestly it had to be the best Big King Fish that I’ve ever gotten. So I was pretty happy with the choice in the end.

We arrived in Orvieto in the late afternoon. Orvieto is an extreme hill town requiring you to drive up a mountain and if you drive into town at all you are into navigating some extremely difficult streets. The town is not meant for non-residents to drive there. We drove some extreme streets and got potentially stuck. So Dominica called the host of our AirBnB and he walked down and found us and told us to keep going the way that we were. He jumped into the car in the back seat to help to direct us as the drive was so extreme.

This was the tightest street driving that Madeline and Emily got to witness. Stone walls with just inches for us to fit through. Very stressful, but we made it through just fine.

We finally drove out of town, and back in, and found a temporary parking place in a small piazza near our apartment. Then our host walked us to the apartment and we got settled in and dropped off our luggage. The apartment is really nice. Three air conditioners, a nice kitchen that actually works, a good bedroom for us and another for the girls, great views into a classic renaissance era courtyard. Very classic, the real thing. We really like this one.

We were barely into the apartment when Emily decided that we were going to do the Terme di Saturnia, the hot springs that we learned about from watching Vagabrothers. It is actually in Tuscany about an hour and a half away, but we are closer while in Orvieto than we will be later on in the trip. Emily really wants to do it, so we got back into the car, figured out how to escape town (after a few scary and hilarious loops through town where it seemed like we were trapped and could not leave) and got onto the road.

The drive to Saturnia was all back roads through the country, but pretty nice. We got there with no problem. Doing it in the evening is the recommended time from some travel guides. And with the heat the way that it is, that made sense today. The last thing that we want to have to do is to get up at four in the morning to drive out here. None of us want to be getting up super early.

We got to Saturnia and started with a photoshoot before I could get into the water because I needed to put the camera back in the car to keep it safe from the sulfur fumes. It was a bit tricky to do the shoot, but I think that it turned out well. Then I returned and got into the spring myself.

The hot springs at Saturnia is pretty cool. The water is only just above body temperature so it isn’t like you ever get burned on it or feel the need to get out. It’s just like a warm bath that is flowing. It is really pretty. There were a lot of people there, but it was not over crowded. The four of us hung out for about two hours in the springs. Emily, Madeline, and I even ventured up and got into the waterfall that feeds the pools. The pressure of the water coming down was really intense and soothing.

The drive back to Orvieto was hard. It was dark, I was heavily fatigued from a long day of driving already, was intense Italian back roads, and my glasses are blurry from the sulfur water. So the result was a painful drive back that was all that I could do to make it.

When we returned to Orvieto, it was really late. We could not park up in the town without me having to get up really early in the morning to move the car. So we put it straight in the parking garage now, took the elevator up to town, and walked to our apartment. The girls were starving, but did not have the energy to go out for food. We had to be fast as everything was going to be already closed. So Dominica and I ran out searching for food.

We got lucky that we found a cafeterria that had closed, but that had not fully closed down yet and they had pre-made sandwiches that had not yet been thrown out. We bought four from them of whatever they had and took that back to the apartment for our dinner. Four white bread sandwiches from the end of the day pile was our first meal in Umbria.

Tomorrow is our day to see Orvieto itself. It’s supposed to be a super gorgeous town. We only saw a small portion of it tonight, but it seems really cool.

Tuesday. GT2 Day Seventeen. Torre Anunziata, Italy.

First thing this morning in Rome I returned to the bakery next door and got breakfast for the family. Cornettos (croissants) for Dominica, Madeline, and me; and a doughnut for Emily. Everyone really liked their breakfast yesterday.

We packed up and checked out of the apartment early. We have a long day ahead of us. First we hiked the very short walk to the local train station and took the Rome rail to the airport. This is our first train of the trip.

At the airport we went to Hertz and got our car. We ended up with a Ford B-Max. Not the worst car, but not the best. Good space and very comfortable. Terrible visibility between the controls being all hidden behind the steering wheel and a huge, ugly, shiny Sony stereo that acts like a mirror and puts the sun directly into your eyes anytime you aren’t driving straight towards it, and sensors that go off constantly for false things. But it handles well and has good power and shifts easily. And the girls love it, it is so spacious in the back seat that Emily thought that we were in an SUV and didn’t realize that this was a sub-compact! The back even has sliding doors, which is hilarious on such a tiny car, and the trunk is huge holding all four of our backpacks and my CPAP. Overall, a pretty nice car. But the reflective and totally useless stereo is so significant of a problem that Dominica has to shove a napkin into the CD player so that it drapes over the stereo so that I can see while driving.

The drive from Rome to Naples seemingly took forever. In reality, it was about four hours in intense sun and heat on loads of crazy roads. We aren’t sure if we used Google Maps incorrectly or if there was like an accident or something on the A1, but I was under the impression that Dominica had said that taking the highway or this route were about the same amount of time so we had chosen this one as it had no tolls. But that might have been misinformation and it might have been only two hours the other way, which would have been nice.

We got to see a lot of coastal Lazio, though. We stopped for lunch at a roadside place, which was hard enough to find. I got my first eggplant parmesean of the trip, which was pretty awesome actually. Emily got lasagna. Dominica just got caprese. And Madeline skipped lunch as there was nothing that she could eat. Roadside places are very difficult if you don’t eat the two or three things on offer. There isn’t any real selection.

We were a little early arriving in Torre Anunziato, which is a suburn of Naples near Pompeii, where we are staying tonight. We stopped at a little bar and got coffees and to our great surprise, pizzetti as it is called here or tomato pie back in Utica. It was good, but I like the Utica variety more. Very clearly the same thing, though. Looks identical. Utica style has more sauce and the sauce is sweeter.

I walked around a bit looking for our apartment, but was unable to find it. By the time that I was done, our host was at the apartment and had given us directions to drive there. So we loaded up in the car and drove one minute up the street to the apartment.

Our apartment here was super nice. A really old building in a terrible neighbourhood, the whole town is terrible, with a completely modern, renovated interior. Really impressive. It had gorgeous appointments, tons of room, the girls had a nice bedroom, we had a nice bedroom, the living room was huge, a big balcony, gated parking, two nice, modern bathrooms with bidets, nice shower, a claw foot tub, etc. All super nice. But a few things were missing. Like the kitchen didn’t have a sink yet, and no running water. So you had to use the bathroom sink to get water. And the biggest thing, is that there is no air conditioning! This we knew when we booked, but that was before being in the worst heat wave to ever hit Europe. We were over one hundred degrees while in the apartment and we were just dying. It was terrible.

There was no food obviously nearby the apartment. So I set out in the heat to go looking for some before dragging the family along as it might take a while. The assumption was that something would be nearby the apartment, I would find out what it was, and report back so that people would know what the options are. It turns out that I had to walk a few miles through some pretty rough neighbourhoods before I found anything. It was insane.

Eventually I found two street pizza places, and one Turkish place. All street food. The last pizza place was actually not so far, but a good walk and in a rough area, and not at all in the direction where we had been led to believe that there would be food.

So I got back and reported on the overall situation. Dominica decided to stay behind while Emily, Madeline, and I went to the local (ish) pizza place and got two standard Margharita pizzas, and some aranchini to take back with us. At least we are getting real Napoli pizza while in Napoli. That is the number one thing to do here.

The food was cheap, and we walked back with it to the apartment to eat it in the unbearable heat. The pizza was good. Good quality, and Napoli style is good. But honestly, not as good as the pizza back in Western NY. I’ve still never found pizza to rival that anywhere in the world. And I’ve had some good pizza in some good places.

The arancini turned out to have meat in it. The girls each tried a bite and said that it was good, but both declined to actually eat any of it. Real Sicilian food and that was all the more interested that they had in it. Dominica and I ate around the meat, they were really awesome.

Nothing to do but go to bed at this point. The Internet here is really bad and we are basically offline for the night. Hopefully things will be better in Orvieto, which is where we are staying tomorrow night. We are only here for one night, so the lack of Internet and Air Conditioning are things we just have to push through. All of the windows are open and we have as much air coming through as we can get.

Tomorrow we are visiting Pompeii first thing in the morning. And once done there, we are driving straight up to Orvieto in Umbria where we will be for two days. We had hoped that we could do Pompeii this evening right upon arrival in the area, but we didn’t quite manage to pull it off.

Monday. GT2 Day Sixteen. Rome.

Today is our one full day in Rome, our only day for actually seeing the city. We saw only a few blocks last night, other than our drive to the apartment from the airport, and today we have to see it all. So to start off the day, I got up and walked next door to a bakery that we had found last night and picked up a real Italian breakfast of Nutella filled cornettos (croissants) for everyone. Then we got out pretty early and walked an extremely long way around Vatican City, over the river, down a few blocks to where the “Big Bus” would pick us up to start our day of hop on, hop off tours. Just walking to the bus first thing in the morning proved to be pretty exhausting. We were so hot before we even got started.

So first things first, we rode the bus for a full circuit to get the “lay of the land” so that the girls would see the whole city tour before getting off of the bus to actually do anything. We sat on the top of the bus. I could not sit up front with Dominica and the girls, it was just too hot. I tried, but I could not cool down. The bus was not full so I got a seat midway back on the left and got a nice breeze and was able to take pictures pretty well.

On the second time around on the bus we got off at the Spanish Steps and went to see that and took some pictures there. It was so hot and bright, very hard to do anything. We had heard that it was going to be about 34C in Rome today, but while we were on the steps the local pharmacy sign showed that it was more like 38C or 99F! No wonder we are feeling so hot.

We did the steps. Then we walked towards the Trevi fountain. On the way there we stopped at a little shop and the girls got tukey salad sandwiches. Dominica got whatever sandwich came without onions. I got penne arrabiata, which I have not had in a very long time. Mine was pretty good. No one else was super excited about theirs.

We walked to Trevi, and took pictures again and again the girls did souvenir shopping. It was so hot that I just took pictures and then retreated to the shaded areas to rest.

From the fountain we walked to the Pantheon. Not a long walk, but the heat is really getting to us. The Pantheon is free, but has been taken over by the Catholic church and the guard almost didn’t let Madeline enter to see it because of her outfit. What a pain, especially on days so incredibly hot. And not even to see something Catholic, but just a pre-Christian architectural wonder. Completely inappropriate, but at least they let her in. But disgraceful how they treat what should be a public work. But shows how openly in Rome Catholics have embraced that the Catholic church is just the Cult of Jupiter renamed and rebranded and mostly reverted to its original form, even sharing the same monuments and places of worship and “Pantheon” of deities. It’s an interesting place to see the new Jupiter and the old side by side conflicted, but united.

After the Pantheon we were tired of walking. Back on the bus for a little while to the Colloseum. We got off there and did pictures. We had considered touring it, but Emily rightfully decided it was too hot for that. So just pictures and back onto the bus. Then we rode the bus for a few hours because the girls were all feeling too worn out to get off of the bus and walk back to the apartment. So we did a full tour of the city about five times today on the hop on, hop off bus. Really, the main attraction was that the bus was not so hot and had free wifi on it. So the girls were not listening to the tour, nor watching too much from the bus, but were just using it as a semi-confortable place to be able to be on their phones. A bit disappointing as later it turned out that they had not listened to the tour through even one time in all of that time as we couldn’t discuss things from the tour as they had not heard them.

Once we finally disembarked from the bus we went looking for dinner. The girls are already tired of Italian and wanted Chinese, something more familiar from home. We learned that Madeline really likes Asian fusion, but calls it Chinese (making it pretty challenging to find what she wants.) But Emily has not had Asian fusion and likes Chinese. We tried to find an Asian fusion place, but our location near Vatican City limits the selection a bit. We did find a nice Chinese place called Er Primo that was close to our apartment and the highest rated Chinese restaurant in the area according to Google Maps. So that was an easy choice.

Dinner was good. Madeline got sweet and sour chicken. Emily got a chicken in pineapple sauce dish. Dominica and I both got pineapple and pine nut fried rice. The food was quite good. Our fried rice was nothing like how are rice is fried at home, but very tasty. The girls were shocked that that was all that we ate. But this is one of our standard Chinese meals.

After dinner, Dominica found a crepery near Vatican City so we walked there. The three girls got crepes, but these were not the best that they have had on the trip. Maybe they were the worst. I tried a bite and didn’t like them. But I am not a crepe fan in general. They have to be perfect for me to care.

After crepes Dominica walked us to Vatican City and the girls got to go to their third country of the trip! That was very fast, there is not much to do there other than to walk through, marvel at how it looks, take some pictures, and head home.

Back to the apartment and off to bed. Nearly everything that we have has now been uploaded! The family and friends back home can not just see little snippets on Flickr and Instagram, but can now watch the long form discussions on YouTube. Way more content there, in much higher quality.

Tomorrow we leave Rome in the morning. We are renting our last car of the trip, hopefully a Fiat 500L, and driving all over Italy. First down to Naples and Pompeii where we will be tomorrow.

Crepes.

Vatican City.

Sunday. GT2 Day Fifteen. Greece to Italy Travel Day.

Today is our day to switch from Greece to Italy. Traveling all day, even though it is not really all that far. It just worked out in such a way that we need to be traveling all day to do what we need to day.

Up at eight. Got all packed and ready and into the car. We did some last minute videos and were on the road at nine. It is a two hour drive to the airport on the far side of Iraklio.

Everyone was tired this morning and not looking forward to the long day ahead of us. The drive went just find, though. We made good time. And we had no issues finding the place to drop off the car at the airport with Athens Car. We had to run out and fuel it up, as well, before turning it in. But that was fast. I dropped Dominica, Madeline, and Emily off at the airport and then dropped off the car, and then walked down to meet them.

We were now stuck at the Iraklio airport for a really long time. We arrived at eleven and our flight is scheduled for three forty five! That’s a long day of doing nothing.

For our first few hours, we were stuck outside of security because it was too early to turn over our luggage. We found a Greek cafe upstairs at the airport, the only thing that is up there, and the girls camped out there. They got a little food, but did not like it very much. They just wanted to sit and read or whatever on their phones. I wanted to get some exercise, since the time was just going to be wasted anyway, so I left them there and for two hours just walked laps of the upstairs of the airport, which I essentially had all to myself. This was actually a super good use of time since I was able to get in around eight thousand steps just during that time, getting my daily number over ten thousand before even going through security, instead of sitting. And while I did laps I could constantly see the flight status boards so was completely on top of the flight updates so that the girls did not need to check in on them. Other than being a lot of time that could have been used to do something fun, it worked out pretty well for me.

Like many European airports, here you get your flight updates at pretty much the last second. So ninety minutes before our flight suddenly our flight was added to the departures board along with information as to what gate we would be leaving from and what check in desk was handling us. We got thirty for. So as soon as that was put up I went and got the girls and we went to desk thirty four and dropped off all of our luggage. We are flying Neos today, for the first time ever. We don’t know this airlines but reviews of them seemed good. The baggage drop was nice and easy, at least.

Then we went through security and had more time to kill on the other side, but not nearly so much. But now we don’t have to carry our luggage so we are feeling much more free. The girls were hungry so went and found an Everest sandwich shop and got sandwiches. I wanted something Greek as my last meal, so found an It’s All Greek and convinced them to make me a vegetarian pita sandwich. They felt badly that it cost so much with no meat, so they gave me a free Coke to go with it.

After eating, it was almost time to board. A good use of our time. We did not eat a lot, but enough that we would not be hungry on our way to Rome.

Boarding was via a bus taking us out to the tarmac. Not surprising, given what a small airport this is. The plane was a Boeing, which I don’t prefer both because, of course, they are a bad company that doesn’t look after their customers and passengers, but also because Boeing seats aren’t nearly as comfortable as Airbus seats. Airbus is the better plane, almost every time. But this flight was not busy and I ended up with a whole row to myself, as did Dominica. And the girls had their own three seats. So loads of space. But even with the whole row, Boeing does that “arm rest that only goes halfway up” crap, so even with all the space in the world, the seats are horribly uncomfortable.

A big surprise for us was that even on this super cheap, super short flight Neos provided a full meal for us. And not just “a” meal, but a really great meal. Cheese, cold cuts, salmon, parsley potatoes, bread, olives, serious chocolate ricotta torte desserts and more. Plus everyone gets a bottle of water, a glass of wine, and coffee service after the meal! And they come around offering “unlimited” bread rolls, too! This was ridiculously posh. I read in the in flight magazine that Neos takes their food extremely seriously as they see it as an important part of Italian culture and being Italy’s airline for Italians. Italians expect a certain level of food quality and Neos aims to please. And all of their food is Italian traditional food, from Italy. Emily just about fell over in shock from what they just handed out to us, she was not expecting something like this at all.

I looked up and Neos flies between Rome and Cancun. That might prove to be handy in the future.

Our flight went well. Very high turbulence landing in Rome, though.

We got into Rome and did all the customary stuff getting out luggage and what not. Once there, we had limited time to get to our apartment so we grabbed an Uber, even though it cost more than the train. That was quick, comfortable, and easy though. We were definitely on the mood to pay penalties for arriving late after hiking all over Rome with our backpacks on.

We got into our apartment and that went really well. Nice and easy. The apartment is tiny but super nice. We just have one “big” room but the beds are comfy and the place is very well appointed. We have great Internet too, for the first time on the trip (hopefully not the only time.) So before anything, I started uploading what media that I could as we are now very far behind from having our Internet out for a day and so many failures. And we got so much good stuff last night that people want to see. The apartment is super cool, in a basement with vaulted stone ceiling. And it has air conditioning, thank goodness.

Once we were settled in we immediately set out for a restaurant for dinner. Time for real Italian eating! We found a cute little place just around the way that was quiet, local(ish) and had food that we thought that everyone would eat. Our location of our apartment is right down the street from Vatican City, so the entire view on our street is St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s crazy how close we are to it.

Dinner was awesome. Dominica got the cheese and pepper dish popular in Rome. I went for something more unique, but wish that I had gotten what she got. The girls ordered spaghetti pomodoro and separately meatballs and combined them to make the American dish. It’s kind of their first Italian meal. At least Italian ingredients.

After dinner we went back to the apartment and dropped off Dominica and Madeline. Then Emily and I went out walking and found a Carrefour grocery and did some late night shopping. It was an experience for Emily as she got to see real Italians get into full out screaming fight over check out lanes in the grocery. A real cultural experience. It’s like getting to be in a movie.

From there we walked back to the apartment and everyone was off to bed. Tomorrow is our day to tour Rome.