24 September 2007

Home Again

We're home!
The rest of Rome was great...on Saturday we left our hotel at about 9am, and didn't return until around 9pm. We walked all but about 3 hours of that!

We first met my coworker, Claude for breakfast near the hotel. She was in Italy for a wedding, and since we knew we'd both be there, we decided to meet up while in Rome. It was great to see her; she was taking off later in the day for Tuscany. Lucky girl! Then we went across the river to the Travestere area of Rome, where we walked around for a while, then stopped for lunch. Since the restaurant kitchen didn't open until noon, and we were there at about 11.45, we passed the time with a bottle of prosecco!

Travestere isn't too far from the Vatican, so we walked down there so that Pernilla could at least see it. The line for St. Peter's was too long, so we just looked at the outside. It really is amazing.

Then we began walking in circles. We wanted to shop, so went back to Corso, but then decided a better place was up near the Vatican. I like to walk, so it was ok by me, but our path to get there was kind of crazy! When we got to the shopping street, we weren't finding many stores, so we stopped to get a drink. In Italy, as in Spain, they usually serve food free with alcohol. It is a nice tradition that I wish we had here...at any rate, this particular place served us the biggest plate of mini-sandwiches and other delicacies with ours. Then, when we ordered another drink, they wanted to bring us a whole other plate! We said no thanks...but almost licked the plate clean. I guess we were hungry.

We saw a bunch of people with "Coin" bags...Coin is a large department store in Italy, a bit like Macy's in the US or El Corte Ingles in Spain. We went in with the plan to meet back up in 20 minutes. By chance, I wandered into the home department, and proceeded to buy all sorts of things for my place. I knew my bag was already bursting, but I couldn't resist this stuff. I am excited to start using it!

It was finally time to head back to the hotel, so we headed back via the Spanish Steps. The sun was setting over Rome, and it was quite beautiful. On our way back, we decided to stop for dinner...we ended up at this horrible place. The food was ok, but the service...very un-Italian. The servers were hovering and the minute we put down our forks, they would try to take our plate away. It's not like there was anyone waiting to sit...but we laughed about it on the way home!

Our flight left at 11.15am on Sunday morning (that's 2.15am in California), and we finally arrived in San Francisco at about 7.25pm (that's 4.25am, Monday, in Italy). It was a really long trip back, complete with us having to run to catch our connecting flight because customs was so backed up!

Thanks everyone for checking in on us while we were away! I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. I keep it up even when I'm not traveling, so check in once in a while!

1 comment:

Monny said...

Hi, my name is Monica... I live in Italy, but not in Rome... really I live in the north... I'm happy you liked our beauties... but I immagine California is better than everything we have here in Italy...
Goodbie....
(I apologize for my mistakes...:P)