May 28: From Trentino to Roma

Today was a travel day, but also a day where Dan was scheduled to ride for 4 hours. Not to be deterred, he woke up at the crack of dawn and headed out into the mountains for his required exertion. The kids and I packed up and loaded as much as we could into the car, and when he got back, showered, and broke down the bike, we were ready to say goodbye to our landlady, Daniela, and jump on the road for Roma!

It was Autostrade almost all the way, which was awesome because we had no puking and minimal complaints of stomach upset. Yay. We came into Rome in kind of a dodgy neighborhood, lots of tall apartments and graffiti, overgrown median weeds and the whole thing was looking a little sketchy. However, we soon crossed through the old wall into the historic part of the city and WOW, it was ready to knock my eye out right away. Wherever you look, in Roma, there are statues, churches, old bits of ruin -- it is a crazy amalgamation of different time periods' idea of what was hot in decoration.

We found our apartment, literally a block from the Coliseum. After some help from our very friendly rental agent, we got up the 97 flights of stairs (going to have to count those) and then back down to the grocery store and parking the car. Parking in Rome is rumored to be awful, and it is. More on that later. For now, we are very excited to be in this gorgeous huge apartment, with bright white walls, stone tile floors, huge windows with shutters you can really "throw open" and 20 foot ceilings. We thought we had a smaller place, but the kids have their own room with each their own bed, we have a long hallway/closet for the bike stuff, a living room, a kitchen, and it's all full of windows and light. Very happy to be here.