First Stop: Rome, Italy!

Well, we made it! It was a long two days of travel. First a direct flight to New York City, and we got in pretty late, so it was basically dinner and straight to bed. I had a chuckle when we arrived to our hotel for the night, because I am 99% sure it is the same hotel I stayed at when I got back to the US from my last trip to Europe. There’s nothing special about it, just a funny coincidence.

Then the next day, we headed to JFK for our flight to Rome! I was able to get us out of economy seats with my credit card points that I had been hoarding for a couple of years (but not into first class, alas) so we were in “premium economy” seats… we got champagne (don’t worry, everyone on an Air France flight gets champagne – we’re not that special), a full dinner meal, and a cold breakfast as part of the service. I watched Boys in the Boat (good movie!) and then tried to sleep the rest of the way… that part didn’t work so well, but I did get some shuteye. We had a tight connection in Paris that I was a little nervous about but it all worked out. I was a little annoyed because we had to go through security again in Paris plus border control, and I had to dump out a bottle of soda I had barely drank… but we made it.

We finally arrived to Rome, where we had a personal driver take us to our airbnb. I’m glad we decided to do that, because we were practically walking zombies with how tired we were. I can’t imagine navigating a new city’s public transportation in that state! We were able to get into the apartment earlier than expected, so we promptly settled in and took a several hour nap to take the edge off. When we woke and were feeling semi functional again, we decided to go walk around the area our airbnb is in. Turns out, we are literally a 2 minute walk away from the Pantheon and just a few more minutes to the Trevi Fountain. We wandered around and checked out a grocery store nearby for fun. We had dinner at a place near the fountain and it was delicious! We both got pizzas with spicy salame… yum! Would eat there again. Then of course, we had to get gelato.

At this point we were still tired from all the travel so we headed back to the apartment. I’m not kidding you when I say I opened a YouTube video to watch, and I couldn’t even last 5 minutes. Kiley and I were out by 9:00 pm and we slept a solid 12 hours!

Well, that’s our first day in Rome… more later…