We’re in Italy

Sunday, November 03, 2024

Jet lag is going on here. I slept several half hours last night while listening and rewinding The Imitation Game. We landed about 11am in Rome, and figured out how to get to Rome train station. They don’t really seem to want to give you all the information you need. We waited an hour for the train to the port town. That train was so crowded I was just standing on stairs for the whole 45 ride and Keith was squished by the door with a lot of other people with suitcases.

Our hotel is on the second (third) floor of a building (they start with zero). We watched an American lady attacking the big brown doors unsuccessfully before we knew her hotel and ours was hiding upstairs. Together we conquered the doors and got in.

We walked around the neighborhood on the way to dinner. There are families with kids EVERYWHERE. After dinner there were still families playing, plus on the shorefront there were big groups of teenagers hanging out. They were singing, and dancing, and running races, and what looked to be just good solid fun. Or they could have been gangs. It is hard to know sometimes.

We went to dinner at 5:30 because we hadn’t eaten since our wake up muffin on the plane and because we knew we would be getting sleepy early. I ordered mixed pasta (8 shapes of pasta that I could find) and Neapolitan potatoes (small chunks of cooked potatoes) all melted together with cheeses and crispy bits of crispiness. It was served with a grater lid right on the dish, and a small (ample!) piece of parmesan. It’s a meal, it’s an activity! It was good. I also had a limoncello spritz. Keith liked my drink a LOT. It is good that he helped me, because I would have fallen off my chair if I had drunk it all.

Oh, I forgot. When we went walking by the shore after dinner, there was a dragon/caterpillar/something else slide, and a giant sculpture of that WWII picture. Huh.