The old saying goes: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do..." and that is exactly what we did. Our adventure started on an early Sunday evening when we landed at Rome Fiumicino Airport. This was my first European venture and I was excited....ROME!!! We went from airplane, to train station, to train before reaching genuine Italian atmosphere. Immediately upon leaving the train, which dropped us off right in the middle of the city, we needed to find our way out of the station. This was a bit confusing and frustrating and made us a bit grumpy after our long journey. Finally, we emerge into Rome. The first thing I notice is the warm air. It is September in Vancouver and the weather is still really nice, but this is a different warmth, the kind of warmth you get in an August summer evening. The next thing I notice immediately is the noise. The train station has all the familiar sounds; engines running, people talking, announcements over the loud speakers, and musak in the background. When the sliding doors open, leading us outside, it suddenly gets loud. Its mainly traffic noise I hear, the roar of trucks, cars, and the whirling sound of all those motorcycles and mopeds and all of them are honking. For a Sunday night, the city is bustling.

Now we need to find our hotel. This is going to be one of the greatest challenges of our trip so far. Navigating the many long corridors of airport gates, security, train stations, even foreign ones did not prepare us for Rome. The streets are really small, I would say a lane and a half (or less) by Canadian standards. There are vehicles parked on both sides of the streets, patios spill onto the sidewalks, and onto the streets. There are people and traffic everywhere. I thought ahead and drew us a map from the train station to our hotel, which turned out to be quite useless. Where were all the street names? and numbers? We wandered around for what seemed forever, when we met a couple who spoke english, and asked them for directions. It turns out they were from Winnepeg. We were so happy to meet someone from home who could help us find our way, someone who spoke our language, who knew the lay of the land...this was not to be. Within the first few minutes of talking, we realized they had had a few cocktails and had no idea where anything was. I was instantly jealous, as I wanted to be tipsy and wandering around Rome enjoying myself. They did give us one of the most valuable pieces of information we got on this trip....the street signs were on the buildings!!

Hurray! We found our hotel, which ended up being about 6 blocks from the station. We drop off our bags in our new home...."we need pizza and wine.....let's go"