Toilet seats, humidity, & Roman ruins

We made it safe and sound to Roma and are loving it... learning a lot on along the way... like... transportation signs are not universal nor all in English, like everyone will tell you. It took us at least an hour to figure out how to exit the Rome airport... and I think we might have died or fainted if we had to walk through all the smokers gathered outside, one more time... we forgot how much people smoke here. We finally found our way, (we blame a combo of lack of sleep and poor signage) jumped on (with fingers crossed) an unmarked, sweltering, stifling train in 90% humidity and sweated our way along the 40 minute ride into the city, where our 500 meter walk turned into blocks & blocks uphill to our hotel on the 4th floor of a mostly unmarked building (we blame that for why passed it up the first time we went by.) Thankfully it has a "lift" or elevator which is basically a tiny closet that goes up & down... but it did the job and when we arrived inside Hotel Margaret we were pleasantly surprised with the hospitality, size of our room & and we discovered a whole new appreciation for air conditioning.

No sleep that first day... Saturday... watched 2 movies on the flight and talked but couldnt fall asleep... when we got to Rome we decided to push through and lasted until about 3pm local time and then joined in on the WONDERFUL concept of siesta and took a 3 hour nap before heading out for a lovely outdoor dinner where we made some friends... a couple from the South of France... she an English teacher, he a Math teacher. (For those in AZ, Rome is 9 hours ahead... for those in OH, it is 6 hours... everyone else, do the math yourself! :)

Now... to the toilets... whoever decided to not put seats in public restrooms must have been a man! Seriously... most places have just a porcelin bowl but as we also discovered, at a poor tourist's expense, no matter how crude the bathroom, you must politely ask if you can use it, inside a shop or restaurant. The beautiful young Italian woman serving pizza by weight stopped what she was doing to berate the man & his son for just assuming they could without buying anything.

As we briefly mentioned above... it is incredibly warm here. The only bright spot is that everyone looks as sweaty as we feel. It is incredibly hot & humid... very glad we're doing Rome on the front end of this trip.

The food... AMAZING... so far we've done pizza, seafood risotto, spinach and ricotta ravioli, caprese salad, famous grilled veggies, gelato, & of course WINE.   No disappointments there and definitely looking forward to continuing to indulge ourselves in the cuisine... that reminds me... we had a long conversation today about how these beautiful Italian folks stay so slender with so much pasta and bread around. Carbs, carbs, carbs. Our theory... a combo of walking every where and not eating processed foods.

We can check off several items on the tourist to-do list... The Colosseum, The Forum, The Pantheon, & Trevi Fountain. There was an interesting incident outside the Colosseum when we saw a group of men with bags running past us. Jaime's first thought was, "Should we be running, too?" Then we saw the police car chasing them. Turns out they were selling purses & jewelry illegally. I fumbled to grab my camera but couldnt snap the photo in time... sorry no visuals.

We were so hot by the time we got to the Pantheon today that when we saw the massive amounts of people and tour groups, we decided to skip going inside and went to have lunch instead. We were perfectly ready to blow it off, until our waiter told us it was a must do. So back we went... thankfully, the crowds had died down and we fully enjoyed what we saw... beautiful... Its amazing when you see all these giant buildings and think about the work that went into them without the luxury of the modern tools and technology we have now... very impressive.

One more interesting thing... We accidentally ended up at a place called the Quirinale. There was one police car parked out front and an officer standing in what looked like a piazza. You could see into a formal looking courtyard and a man dressed in what looked like a cross between a Canadian mounty & British officers uniform. So I went up to ask the police officer for more info.
me: what is this?
him: the presidential palace
me: ...
him: presidente
me:...
him: of italia
me: the president, president????
him: si, si, the president of Italy
me: lives right here?
him: yes
me: is he there right now?
him: yes
So, of course... I had to have a photo taken right there... unbelievable how close you could get... no fences, barriers, nothing... just one guy with a gun... but i guess thats all you really need.

By the way... the Spanglish thing was dead on... we can't stop speaking Spanish to everyone here... the good news is... they seem to understand it... and they do seem to appreciate our attempts at Italian.

Later tonight... we will meet up with Jaime's good friend from high school, Erin, who is hopping over from London. We plan to do whats called the Dolce Vita Stroll this evening and visit the Spanish Steps. Tomorrow we will tackle Vatican City... St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel.

Ciao for now,
Love, Jill and Jaime