Rome Day 1

On the airplane!

Waiting at the Portland Airport.

Sunrise over the USA.

Snowy over most the USA.

Atlanta, Georgia.

Sunrise over Europe.

More sunrise...so pretty.

At hotel, making plans for the day while we wait for our room.

Early exploring our first day.

A street in Rome.

I liked the Christmas decorations!

Fountain and Pantheon!

Back view of Pantheon.

I think this is the view from the hotel deck.

Another View of Rome.

On top of the hotel, looking at the Pantheon.

Anthony's turn!

We could see really far from the hotel deck.

Hotel Staircase.

We found the Trevi Fountain and threw our coins in.

Exploring after our nap.

This street was so packed! It is right below the Spanish Steps and has the high end shops.

Church above the Spanish Steps.

I liked the pretty lights.

Anthony in front of Pnatheon Doors - they were so big, I only got the bottom half with Anthony in the picture.

We arrived in Rome, Italy today!!!  It is really exciting to be here and the city is very beautiful.  It is beautiful in general, but even more so with all of the Christmas decorations.  To get here, we drove to Portland, Oregon right after the wedding.  We were trying to beat possible freezing rain and snow.  The wind got pretty horrible and it was blowing tumbleweed a and even small pebbles in places, but we're not complaining because that was fine enough to deal with.  When arrived in Portland 11:00 at night and were back up at 3am to make it to the airport for the 6:30 am flight.  PDX was running their security so smoothly, that we made it through the airport super quick and swift.  We didn't even have to take off shoes!  We flew from Portland to Atlanta, Georgia for our connecting flight.  It was only 4 1/2 hours to get there.  Now, mind you, this was the longest flight I'd been on until last night!  So it seemed long enough.  Anthony got some snoozes in, but I ended up looking out the window and watching the in-flight movie "Elf."  There was snow over half the country, at least what I could see as it was cloudy most of the way.  After arriving in Atlanta, we got a quick bite to eat and then walked s much as we could before the really long flight happened.

We left Atlanta 4:30pm Eastern time.  This means the sun was already going down.  We saw the sun rise in Portland, set in Atlanta, and then rise again over Europe all within the same "day" for us.  The plane to Rome was super spiffy.  My have they make travel nice.  We all had our own touch screen tvs on the chair in front of us and there were a ton of free movies to choose from.  I watched "Jack the Giant Slayer," "Les Miserables," and I only got part way through another one..."Beautiful Creatures?"  I spent so e of the other time watching the map the showed exactly where we were flying over in the world.  We were served two meals on the place in addition to snacks and a sandwich meal that I slept through.  We were set to arrive early Sunday morning so we needed to try to get some sleep on the plane otherwise we'd be awake for over 24 hours with little sleep the last time we slept, Thursday night before the wedding.  Right when I was ready to sleep we got into bad turbulence.  That's when I put on Les Miserables to district me.  Luckily, the Tylenol PM I took to help me sleep kicked in too and I had weird sleep where I woke probably at least every 15 minutes for half the flight.  First class was looking mighty nice!  I woke up when we were just South of Ireland.  I saw what seemed to be boats on the ocean too as it was dark and I don't think we were flying upside down.  We flew in over mostly the Netherlands and France before landing in Rome.  The sunrise was absolutely beautiful from the sky too.  It was just light when we reached Italy that we could see the Mediterranean and Italy from above.

     Several planes seemed to land at the airport at. The same time, so there was shut Lu e for Customs, but it was easy to go through and received my first passport stamp!  We collected our bags, bought train tickets, and found a train to central Rome.  From there we took a taxi to our hotel.  The hotel wasn't quite ready for us as the tailwind made our plane super early, so we dropped bags off and had breakfast at the hotel (mostly coffee to keep us awake at this point).  Or hotel is right by the Pantheon so we checked the Pantheon out right away after breakfast.  We ended up walking all over the area by our hotel and even found the Christmas carnival area in Plazza Novena.  At the plaza we tried roasted chestnuts and even bought two Christmas decorations because they were odd.  We kept seeing witches on broomsticks, like we use for Halloween, but they were with all theChristmas stuff.  So we got to little witches that well use for Halloween.

    W did get into our room by 11:30.  I didn't want to fall asleep, but we were so tired for having barely slept from Thursday that we fell asleep for what was supposed to be a brief nap...well it turned into two hours.  My body thought it was the middle of the night, but we fired ourselves back up and out before we completely mixed ourselves up off of local time.  We spent the evening walking around...feels so good after sitting for so long Saturday.  We found a column, Trevi Fountain, and the Spanish steps.  We went into several beautiful churches and walked through the major shopping districts which are decorated so nicely for Christmas.  We are learning how to walk in this city as pedestrians are so huge in numbers that they often just walk in the streets.  Cars go fast, so you have to watch for them.  I really like this city so far.  I feel like I am in Disneyland with all of the lights and cobblestones, but this is no make believe, it's the real thing!  

    We came in early for the city.  It is 8:00 here, but we are so tired still and we need to get up early tomorrow because tomorrow we go to the Vatican!  I will go ahead and publish this now, so those who wish can read as we spend time in Rome.  I will add the photos for each day once we are back home though.