Let's Go Roma! and then Let's Go Homa!

Our whirlwind European tour was drawing to a close and our last stop was Roma.

We took a commuter train that lasted about 3 hours. Apparently, we passed through some beautiful Italian countryside, as in Under the Tuscan Sun, Italian vineyard beautiful, but we didn't get to see it. The windows for our seats were completely covered by an advertisement. Fail. So, I just had to occupy myself with the beverage cart that brought copious amounts of espresso and wine.

When we arrived into the city, we made our way to the hotel, checked in, and then set out to find, what else? Lunch! I love that eating in Europe is not rushed. Two hour meals are not unusual and could be considered on the shorter end of meal times. You get to sit, relax, and ENJOY the company and the food. After lunch, we wandered around the city for a bit and then went back to the hotel for a little siesta before dinner.

The next morning Ryan took me on the walking tour of Rome. We hit the Colosseum, Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus), Forum Boarium, Capitoline Hill, the Forum ruins, and Il Vittoriano. There are also several aquaduct ruins and just fascinating historical buildings that are amazing. We also happened along an apartment/dormitory complex that looked like it was going through some major excavations. What happened was that the complex was wanting to expand, but when they went to break ground, they found some more ancient ruins and now had to excavate instead of building. I joked to Ryan that Italians are probably so used to this happening that when it does, they get upset because there will be a delay in productivity. But if something like this were to happen in the States, we would be over the moon.

The walking tour didn't take very long so on the way back we stopped at a cute little restaurant that was decorated in Cracker Barrel style in that it was all kitschy. A great atmosphere with the wait staff breaking into song every now and then, and they gave us a free eggplant starter that was yummy! Another thing about eating in Europe, everything is so fresh. I noticed that the menus will indicate if an item is made from a frozen product. We could definitely tell that the pizza and pasta that we had that day was fresh dough and fresh pasta. After lunch, we trekked over to the Fontana di Trevi. I threw in the requisite coin and off we went to get away from the enormous crowd of tourists. We stopped for an afternoon gelato and wine. Once again, we stopped for a siesta before dinner. Our last dinner in Roma was stupendous. We were plied with several complimentary starters and my main course was a penne vodka dish that was made table side. Molto bene! Unfortunately, and I do mean unfortunately, with all the starters that were provided, I did not have it in me to indulge in the dessert cart.  Both Ryan and I settled for a cappuccino and caffé corretto. A very enjoyable end to our time in Roma and Europe.

So the trip home. On the plus side, we made all of our flights. The bad side, we had to do what I call the Home Alone sprint for each of our connections. We had a connection in NYC and Atlanta. The connection in NYC would have been fine had our flight from Roma not been over an hour late, nor had we had to wait 45 minutes for our luggage to come through just to recheck it again. Thankfully, both Ryan and I have global entry that allowed us to bypass the hours long line at customs. Thankfully, a Delta counter agent let us cut through the security line (where we saw Penn Jillette, of Penn and Teller fame, waiting in line just like the commoners). We knew the connection in Atlanta would be a little dicey as we only had 40 minutes between flights, and we were arriving in E terminal and departing from B terminal, but yet again, we were late leaving NYC, so again, we ran from the gate to the train and from the train to the gate. And then we were home.

What an amazing, amazing trip! I had a grand ol' time and can't wait to go back! Thanks to Ryan for taking me on this trip of a lifetime!

Milano- and not Alyssa or the cookie.

Our time in Paris had come to a close, and we were off to Milano. We decided to be adventurous and take an overnight train. After navigating through the train station, we finally made it into our private car and were pleasantly surprised when the train attendent came by and gave us some goodies (toiletries, slippers, bottles of water, etc).  

During our trip planning, we (and by we, I mean Ryan) read that the dining car can get pretty crazy, so we decided to not mess with it and stopped by a grocery store and stocked up on bread, cheese, and vino. When we were all settled in, and the train was on its way, we started a movie and broke into our grocery store goodies. At some point during the night, we passed through the Alps, but it was too dark to really see anything. We pulled into the Milano Centrale at 5:30. In. The. Morning. Let me just say, that 5:30 am in Milano in December, it's dark and it's cold. As in there was snow on the ground cold. Luckily, our hotel was only a few blocks away, so we trudged on. Did I mention that check-in time was 2:00 pm? The desk clerk let us leave our bags and advised us to check back around noon to see and maybe our room would be ready early, depending if the current occupants checked-out early. Back out into the darkness and cold we went.

Almost 7 hours to kill and absolutely nowhere to go. Nothing was open, and we had no idea of when things would start to open. We headed back to the train station and bought a day pass for the metro. We went down to the Duomo and Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. The Christmas lights were still on and the piazza was completely deserted, so it did make for some great picture taking. We wandered down into the Galleria and saw all the high end shops that would have been fun to go into had it not been so early o' thirty. Finally, shops were starting to open, and we ducked into a small café for coffee and pastries, which perked us up a little bit. 

Fast forward a few hours of more aimless wandering and metro riding and window shopping, we decided to take a chance to see if our room was ready, even though it wasn't quite noon yet, and it was! Praise jeebus. And then we napped.

Roused and ready to go, our only plans for the night was to see Da Vinci's Last Supper painting. After meeting up with our tour group, we took a tour of Castello Sforzesco. Although not in use now, it is home to some great art, including some wall sketches from Da Vinci as he worked on another fresco, and antiquities.

The Last Supper was ah-may-zing(!) and in pretty good shape for not being a fresco, but simply a wall mural and for being nearly destroyed by bombers during WWII. Of course no pictures were allowed, pretty much nothing was allowed outside of breathing, and that probably would have been restricted if it were possible. It was neat to find out that the painting is in the dining hall of the monastery, so way back when, the monks got to be in its presence for meals. Only groups of 20-25 people are allowed in at a time and only for 15 minutes at a time. It was truly a humbling experience to be in the presence of something that I have known about for almost my entire life. Of course, I went all Dan Brown and examined it for the hidden clues listed in the book.

After the tour, we made our way back to the hotel to wash up and then headed out for pre-dinner drinks and then found a small restaurant for dinner. The one thing that I really liked about eating in Europe was that the tax and tip is already built into the price. So for our dinner: 2 waters, a bottle of wine, a pizza, a pasta dish, 2 gelatos, 1 cappuccino, 1 caffé corretto (espresso with grappa) was 37 euro flat. 

 And that was our Milano adventure. Lesson learned? Book the hotel for the night before so that we have somewhere to sleep when we get in at 5:30 in the morning. Next stop- Roma!