I arrived in Rome the night before Fouad and checked into our hotel. I gave Fouad directions on how to get there from the train station (right across the street) and went to bed. I was really worried that he was going to miss his flight or get lost on his way, but I was so excited that he would be arriving in the morning! I hadn't seen him in a week!
Fouad arrived in Rome after his long flight, and went to get his bag at baggage claim...but it wasn't there :-(. Apparently, his bag wasn't loaded on his plane in Atlanta. After speaking with the people at the Luggage Assistance desk at the airport (who weren't very helpful...) Fouad made his way to the
Radisson. I was so proud of him for navigating from Atlanta to Rome and from the airport to our hotel! We called the lost baggage hotline and checked online, but I still wasn't able to get confirmation that his bag was on the way. The staff at the front desk of our hotel assured me that they would track the bag and have it waiting for us before the morning.
Of course, I was really mostly worried about Fouad's bag, but I was also worried about our tour of the Vatican scheduled for the afternoon. You see, Fouad was wearing shorts and that's not allowed in the Vatican - you must wear pants. After speaking again with the staff at the front desk, we went over to the market next door and picked up a pair of track pants for 6 euro - not too shabby, but not exactly what Fouad was hoping to wear. Oh well...
We were then off to the Vatican area after buying our Roma Passes and hopping on the Metro. Fouad needed some caffeine, so we stopped to get an
espresso. Then we were off to search for lunch. Our tour started at 1:00 PM, so we were in a hurry. We decided to get a quick bite, and
pizza sounded great! We split two slices of margherita pizza and porcini mushroom pizza. It was delicious.
After lunch, we hurried over to the
Vatican to start our tour. It was a "quick" three hour tour through the
Vatican museums,
St. Peter's basicillca, and the
Sistine Chapel. We could have spent eight hours had we stopped to look at everything in the museums, but our tour guide gave us the highlights before heading over to the Sistine Chapel. No photos or videos were to be taken in the Sistine Chapel, and there was also supposed to be no talking. We were told to keep quiet several times, and yelled at for taking photos (even though we weren't). Well, that just made me want to take photos even more - which
we did. After the chapel, we headed over to
St. Peter's, and then the tombs of the Popes. This tour was really amazing - but our feet were killing us at the end!
Tired feet called for our first gelato in Italy! We took a little break over at Old Bridge Gelato near the Vatican. I was in love! I had pistachio, amaretto, and nutella gelato, while Fouad had chocolate, nutella, and pineapple. Mmmmm! It had been a long day already, so we headed back to the hotel for a quick nap before our first night out in Rome. Guess what was waiting for us when we arrived...Fouad's bag! Hooray!
After a little rest, we headed over to Trastevere to get dinner. This neighborhood across the Tiber River is the hot spot in Rome for restaurants. We had our first crazy experience with Rome transportation - the bus to Trastevere was jammed packed! We kept squeezing more and more people on the bus, and it was HOT. After a sweaty ride and getting too close to some strangers (deodorant really wasn't popular with them), we finally made it over to Trastevere.
After getting a little lost (which we would do frequently on this trip), we found the restaurant that Rick Steve's had recommended - Osteria da Olinda. It was a wonderful little mom & pop type place where it seemed that the whole family was in the kitchen working on your dinner. We waited a few minutes for a table outside, and then we ordered. We got a veggie appetizer, pasta with cheese & pepper, veal with potatoes, and wine of course. It was simple, but delicious! We also had our first experience with street performers and salesmen during our dinner outside. First, we had a few people stop by to offer roses for sale (this happened EVERY night in EVERY city), and then we had a "magician" stop by for a performance. His grand finale involved taking off his toupee and collecting tips from the diners outside. Pretty funny :-)
After dinner, we found another recommended gelateria - Gelato de la Scalla. We split a cup with chocolate, cinnamon (awesome!), and pear. We were able to navigate ourselves back to the bus stop - but we noticed a HUGE crowd. Apparently, the buses had been running a little slowly. After waiting 45 minutes, a bus finally showed up and everyone squeezed on and made the hot and sweaty journey back to the train station. We finally made it back to the room and passed out after our long first day!
Sorry about the lack of pictures on this day...we were still trying to figure out a good picture to video camera ratio. It gets better...I promise.
