Italy-Day1

Day one was quite an adventure. We made it to GSP on time and got our tickets. Note for future travels: when you buy tickets on Priceline, they assign you random seats; none of us were seated together, on any flights. We were able to be seated together with a little begging. After takeoff, the flight was very choppy and the pilot came on to say that they were having trouble retracting the landing gear (to which I wondered- if we are having problems raising the landing gear, shouldn’t we leave them down? I can put up with a rough flight if it means an easy landing!) Fortunately, because the landing was rough enough with landing gear, the landing gear did come back down when we landed.
We suffered through a five hour layover in Philly and finally boarded the plane. We pulled away from the gate and began taxiing to the runway. After about 150 yards, we stopped and the pilot announced we were having technical problems and would return to the gate for repairs for about 30 minutes. Two hours later we taxied to the runway and sat there in line for an hour. The flight from Philly to Rome was one of the smoothest that I have ever had. Even though we were in coach, we still had individual TVs. I watched Monsters, Inc and read two books on the flight.
Upon landing in Rome (already three hours late) we breezed through immigration and customs, then waited for an hour in baggage claim. We finally met up with Sarah’s dad and left for the train station to Rome. We stored our baggage in a lock up in the train station and went out to tour Rome.
Rome was unbelievably busy today. This week is the one year anniversary of Pope John Paul’s death, Italy’s elections, and it is also American college’s spring break. Our first stop was the Coliseum. Even though I’ve been there before, it was still breathtaking. We went from there through the Roman Forum, the old downtown area. Next we went on the metro(subway) and visited the Trevi Fountain. The tradition is to each throw a coin backwards over your head into the water and good things are supposed to happen to you. What a great idea! Throw money away and expect good things to miraculously happen to you. What idiot would do that? We got our picture taken with all of us throwing money into the fountain.
After the Trevi Fountain we got some gelati, which is Italian ice cream, not related to "Italian Ice" in America. It was delicious! We also went to visit the Spanish stairs. I don’t know why they are called the "Spanish Stairs" when they are in Rome, but I will check on that. The stairs were very crowded and we had about an hour and a half before the last train left Rome so we took off to Termini, Rome’s Grand Central Station.
On the Metro to Termini, I was fortunate to be the only one in our group to fully experience the Roman culture. I was pickpocketed. Other than our group, there were two people close enough to me to rob me, one who mysteriously disappeared off the Metro when we stopped- just as I was saying "where’s my wallet?" I cleaned out my wallet before I came so all I had in there was 120 euro (about US $140), my driver’s license and two credit cards. It would have been much worse if I had lost all of my EMS certifications and such. Oh well, it had to happen eventually. I have been to Africa, Japan, England, and Italy and have traveled on subways in New York, Rome, Chicago, Boston, and DC. I was due.
We bought our train tickets and arrived at the platform just in time to see our train leave. We waved. We waited another hour and caught the last train out of town. The rest of our trip was uneventful and we made it to the Di Bagnos’ house safely.
Tomorrow and Tuesday we will be in Venice. Let’s hope that not every day is this eventful