Our arrival

Gotta love the smart cars - I don't know that my Mazda would fit where TWO Smart cars do :)

The stairs up to our hotel in Rome

The street outside our hotel

Picture of the doorway of our Roman hotel

We had a fairly uneventful start to our trip.  Luckily on the flight over I didn’t have anyone sitting next to me so that helped a bit.  We arrived in Amsterdam with just enough time to get through the passport check and on to our next flight.  Once in Rome, we gathered all our things and got to the station to take the train into town.  It was a nice 30 or so minute ride into town allowing us the chance to see a bit of the city.  We walked from the train station to our hotel - or where I thought our hotel was - only to overshoot our street by a block or two.  Incidentally, as we overshot our hotel, we were placed along the Via Nazionale which is a main road through Rome - and all of a sudden we were surrounded by police and black sedans.  I jokingly said that Silvio Berlusconi was rolling through town, but it happened to be the Pope.  I saw the white hair, white beanie cap, and glow from the inside of the car that is only associated with holy people - or associated with people who have the dome light on.  That added a little kick to our step and we were able to easily locate our hotel shortly thereafter. 

We took the 37 stairs up to the lobby door, and then took seven more up to the elevator... didn’t seem to make sense to have an elevator that started that far up, but whatever.  It is a cute little hotel located next to the Opera, in a busy part of town.  Once we had settled in a bit, it was time to try to locate Mike.  He was due in from Beijing around 7, so with luggage retrieval and transport to the hotel, we figured within a 30-45 minute range that he would show up.  We waited outside the hotel for him, pacing back and forth with excitement since it’d been so long since we all saw each other. After an occasional, “is that him?” followed by a, “nope too heavy” or “too much hair” or “too tall,” we finally found the goldilocks porridge that suited us best - our guy Mike.  He had a suitcase and that was all - evidently he should have packed a bag or two more since he missed a couple of key pieces to pack, namely, socks.  He doesn’t work with a prepared list, (like I do) or do much research about where he’s traveling (unlike I do) and so therefore, without even starting the trip, he’s a lesser traveler in my mind.  However, he’s made it to various ends of the world on his own, like I have, and lives to tell the tales, so I suppose it works.  

We started off with a nice dinner just down the street from where we were staying and headed to bed.