A Long Day....

Welcome to my blog that will hopefully detail my adventures as my mom and I frolic through Europe and I work as an au pair for a family in Spain. I'm not really sure how I feel about blogs, seeing as I've never written one nor really read any before, and I have trouble keeping a diary/journal for more than 3 days, BUT I'll do my best. :) So here we go...

I say it was a long day because our flight left from Charlotte on June 1st and arrived nine or so hours later in Rome June 2nd. As I went through security, the man waved me through with a "Come on, Butter Cups." I thought nothing of it until I heard him exclaiming to another security person, "What? It wasn't sexual - it was a reference to her shirt!" (to see what shirt I was wearing, see first picture) I should have sued him for sexual harrassment and used the money to get some shoes in Milan!...but, alas, I pressed on to the plane. To sum up: 2 kids on the plane (besides a little bit of crying and odd banging sounds) not so bad, 2 adults on the plane (that would not stop laughing when the rest of the plane was sleeping) not so much, the BEST airplane dinner EVER (pasta, salad, roll, cookie, ...and a whole Coke :) hehe), choices of movies (I watched "Just Go With It"...pretty hilarious), 4 - 5 hours of shut eye, 0 hours of actual sleep. And with that, we arrived in Rome!

Taking a taxi to our hotel ended up meaning a ride in a van with a bunch of other people to their different accommodations, BUT we got to sit up front giving us the best view of CRAZY Roman drivers!! In fact, as we left the airport behind and entered the Eternal City, our driver said "Welcome to Roma"...and all the lines depicting lanes vanished. I won't lie to you, I sort of enjoyed the ridiculous free-for-all with our driver staring at a map to find all the different hotels and the scooters whizzing by, in and out of traffic. In the U.S., we try and watch out for pedestrians. In Italy, it's umm...well, slightly the opposite. All in all, I thought it was fun, but I don't especially look forward to the drive out once we rent our own car to leave Rome.

We got to the hotel, which didn't have our rooms ready, so we left our luggage...in the kitchen. Then, we headed out to see Rome with no sleep, no shower, and no cares!
Colosseum - CLOSED
Roman Forum - CLOSED
Arch of Constantine - NEVER OPEN (haha ok, it just has a fence around it, so we got as close as possible)
What the HECK??!?!! We didn't know what was going on...I still don't. Either the Festival of Ascension or some military/national parade that decided to shut down the whole city. Le sigh...so we decided to walk back to the hotel to maybe check in and figure out some plannage. On the way back, up a needlessly steep incline, we found this great spot for pictures:

Yea that's right - Reese's Peanut Butter Cups...not sexual after all. From here, we could also tell that bleacher-type seats were being assembled to watch the parade - so we went and sat on a hill in a nice shady spot to see what all the fuss was about. I was bound and determined to watch this parade to feel like we did something for the day...but an hour or two later, we had only seen a parade of street sweepers.

We thought it'd be best to be as lazy as possible and take a fun bike taxi back to the hotel instead of trying to walk up that huge hill again. But when we started talking to him, we realized he was a tour guide and he said if we wanted him to act like a taxi, it would cost a lot extra...because he didn't want to go up the hill of doom either. The tour was awesome and worth every penny! ...or euro...whatever. Among other things, we saw:

The Trevi Fountain - of course I made a wish, but I can't tell you what it was!! And someone threw a coin and hit my mom hahahaha...don't worry she's ok.

The Spanish Steps - where some random scary police-looking cars/motorcycles pulled up and our driver said it was the Mafia...

The Pantheon - which was ALSO CLOSED, to the disbelief of our driver
and...

The VOLTURI - I know, Daddy. I took this just for you...as proof.

oh yea! and Captain Jack Sparrow :) he was there too.
The best part was just riding around in this little contraption while our driver rang his little bike bell every five seconds to move people out of the way...it was sort of hilarious.

So FINALLY we began our long trek back to the hotel...when it started raining, I mean pouring. When we got to our room we were soaked, but we took a nap, changed, and headed out again. After wandering around, we ended up eating at a place called "Wanted" where I ate the delicious cannoli with ricotta cheese and spinach and my mom had pasta bags with pear and walnuts. I also ordered grilled cheese - I know, I know, I'm in Italy and not supposed to be ordering food I can get at any time...but I just figured Italy could probably make a mean grilled cheese sandwich (but I got the other food in addition, no worries). Our first course was cleared and the waiter brought new silverware. "Why would the waiter give me a fork for my grilled cheese?" I asked. My mom's only reasoning, "...maybe they thought you'd be splitting the grilled vegetables with me?" But no, I had ordered...grilled...cheese.

After dinner, we walked to the Trevi Fountain again...where it was unbearably crowded again. Oh! - on the way there we found a wax museum



Why, Obama? Why?

 then we got my first real Italian gelato..YUMMM!!! So much better than grilled cheese...
thenwefinallywentbacktothehotelandpassedout....PHEW! I warned you it was a long day...but it was amazing and I can't wait for many more!