Getting There is Half the Fun

Or so the saying goes. Michelle and I flew from Portland to Seattle, then transferred to our Luftansa flight to Frankfurt. Besides movies and music, one of the options for the viewing screen in each seat was current flight information. Live satellite positioning from various distances included day/night indication through light and shadow. We flew north over Canada, Greenland and Iceland before clipping Great Britain and crossing into Europe. I was excited to peek out the window at these new lands, but repeatedly disappointed by the nearly unbroken layer of clouds below. Interesting to me is that the sun never set, something I'd only heard about before.

In Frankfurt the clouds unleashed. Our flight landed out on the tarmac and we took a shuttle into the terminal. Due to some construction and lack of clear directions, we had quite a walk to our next gate. The flight to Rome was a bit bumpy due to the weather, but the sun was shining in a cloudless sky once we arrived. We managed to find our luggage before settling in for the hour wait for Mom to arrive. While waiting, I noticed a sign for a shuttle that would drop us near the Vatican. The price was less than what Mom had stated for transportation and our hotel was near the Vatican, so this seemed like a great deal.

Mom arrived. We wheeled our luggage out into the hot Italian sun and waited for the shuttle. Naturally, many shuttles are running about the airport, but finally ours arrived and we popped our suitcases into the underneath storage and hopped aboard. Comfy and air conditioned, we settled into seeing the sights along the way. I loved the old world styles of most homes and loved the age of everything. There would certainly be many textures and architectural details for me to photograph!

Upon arriving at Piazza Cavour, the driver got off to give us our bags. Since we were some of the first customers, our luggage was in the back. The driver didn't speak much English, so a young lady helped with explaining where our bags were. The driver was visibly upset that our bags hadn't been placed correctly. Most people were traveling on to the Metro terminal, so ours should have been placed on the outside for easy access. Oh, well. Different language; bound to be glitches.

So, there we stood with our various bags in the hot afternoon sun. Mom and I each pulled out guidebooks with maps and searched for Piazza Cavour. No luck. We looked for street signs - Oh, there they are. Street names are carved into stones on the sides of the buildings. Sadly, we couldn't find those streets on our maps either, since we weren't even sure which direction we were from the Vatican. We started to walk, assuming the street with a signal light several blocks away would be on our maps. It was, but we didn't know our cross street, so still a bit stumped. We finally asked a local to show us where we were on our map. Once oriented, we knew right where to go.




Tired from lack of sleep and toting luggage for nearly a mile over cobblestone sidewalks, we arrived at where our hotel should be. No big signs, as I would expect in the States. In fact, things looked a little dingy and graffiti was everywhere. We started to doubt our hotel choice and reservations. Just then a kindly Italian gentleman approached and asked if we were looking for Hotel Les Chambre D'Or. We were, but since I hadn't heard it pronounced before it took a moment to realize that is what we wanted. He showed us the location of the office, we were shown to our rooms and we could finally rest for a bit.



New discoveries:
*Rome has graffiti everywhere! You'd think such a proud, ancient city would clean up it's streets.
*The ground floor isn't the first floor, as it is here. They start at "0," so our "1st floor" room was upstairs on what I would call the 2nd floor.
*Loved the old elevator! Metal cage outside and wooden/glass car inside. Normally, I walked for the exercise, though.
*Despite similar architecture, each building is unique with unique designs and styles. Photo overload for me!