Rome, Day 1

A little jet lag will never stop the Clarks! That’s right, we hit the ground running…..and the night is still young (in Roman time anyway!)

After being picked up by our personal driver (yes, he had a sign that had our names on it….we felt like rock stars!) we headed to the city in style, riding in the back of a Mercedes Sedan. Well, at least I thought we were special until I noticed that all taxi cabs were Mercedes too. I guess to Europeans, they aren’t imports....this will take some getting used to. What will also take some getting used to is the driving. Evidentially, there aren’t any true lanes, speed limits, right of way, etc….. I don’t know how this hot mess all works together, but it does.

After checking into our cute hotel, with a window that fully opens up to allow us to watch and listen to the bustling street passers below, we grabbed a map and headed out to explore.

This isn’t like any US city. First of all, it’s thousands of years older, but it also isn’t laid out in a “grid” like structure. The quaint roads weave in whatever direction their original trails happen to have led them. The streets aren’t marked with gosh American signs at every corner, nor are ostentatious skyscrapers present; acting as modern day lighthouses to guide the shipwrecked lives of overanxious tourists. It is almost as if the forces of time and tradition refuse to yield to the efficiencies of modern life. Although it was very frustrating from a perfectionist standpoint, and we got lost multiple times, we wouldn’t have traded it for anything. It is truly a magnificent and historic city.

In our five hours of walking, we managed to see the Pantheon, Pizza Navoria, Piazza del Popolo (where we had our first meal in Rome), Vittorio Emanuele Monument, Fontana di Trevi (see the pic of us above), Pizza di Spagna, and a host of other places that we weren’t exactly sure what they were!

Tomorrow morning, we head off for a three hour tour of the Vatican…..I can’t wait to see the Sistine Chapel, it has been on my life list.

Megan continues to say, “This is so surreal!” When I finally inquired as to what exactly is so surreal, she replied, “That this is a dream come true.”

She couldn’t have been more poignant and succinct……we are indeed living our dream!