Good Afternoon from Roma!
Jenny and I had a smooth and safe flight from Chicago to Rome last night. I now remember why we left for Orlando. It was soo cloudy in Chicago with overcast skies. Once at Gate K5 there at O'hare, we had a couple of the cruise critic.com people we had been chatting with come up to us and ask "Are you Gabe?". It was funny. We met Jean and her Husband Steve, both coming in from Los Angeles. Then we met Jim, who was flying in from Denver with his wife Lila. All of us were aboard flight 110, so it was cool to be aboard a plane with other people I had been chatting with for about a year.
Luckily Jenny and I had seats with a powerport. We watched the movie Casino Royale on Flight 110. On the previous leg from Orlando to Chicago, we caught up with the last two episodes of "24" that she downloaded off Itunes. So that made the flight much shorter.
As I look at Jenny's Macbook now, it says its 10:27 AM back home. But here in Roma it's 4:27PM. We got some sleep on the flight which was nice. As the sun came up over our plane, we could see France below us. We flew through france in a diagonal direction from just under Paris and coming out right over Nice and the french riviera at about 7:30 AM local time. It looked soo cool!! Then we hugged the italian coastline as the plane come in for a landing. It was all very green here in Italy.
It was very surreal to be landing in Italy. We didn't see much traffic there except for many Alitalia planes. When we went through customs, the guy just stamped our passports and didnt even bother to ask us anything. We quickly proceeded to pick up our luggage, and all of it made it without any problems. Then I powered up my cell phone, and not knowing exactly how to do this, I saw our provider or carrier was some company called ITIM on the display. I then called Stefano with Rome Cabs to find out where our driver was. He was just on the outside of the baggage claim area with a sign with our last name. His name was Marco, and he also happens to be our driver and tour guide for our full day rome tour on 4/30. Marco was very nice and fun. He had a Mercedes car that seemed to be all tricked out. Then, he proceeded to drive us into Roma. Man he drove fast. My chicago style driving has nothing on this guy and the italians in how they drive. I thought Mexico driving was crazy. the lines painted on the roads here, are treated like chalk drawings. The drivers use them as a reference when they feel like it, otherwise, if a spot opens up, they take it. He hauled!! We got a quick tour coming into the city center, courtesy of Marco.
We're here now in our Hotel. The Best B&B Pantheon and we love it. It's like only 4 bedrooms and it's contemporary with free wi-fi and breakfast, and were about 200 meters from Campo Fiori, a block from the Pantheon or so, and are just chillin right now as we are still a little jet lag and have a full plate of touring for Sunday, and Monday here in Rome. So we'll get ready to go out in a few hours to walk around and get some dinner. We have a balcony room and we face a cute little lunch place with the umbrellas and stuff. The street were on is also very busy as Ive seen all sorts of double decker and motorcoach buses drive by slowly. Oh and lots of motorcycle traffic.
Here is the link to the Best B&B Pantheon. I would totally recommend this to any of you coming out to Rome in the future.
http://www.bestbb.it/p_eng_camere.htm
Ok that was it. Sorry for the long text, but wanted to post an update. It's all very cool.
-Gabe
