ROMA!!!! DAY ONE!

Today was one crazy day! After the long uncomfortable plane ride, we finally landed in ROME. If the sticky hot wave of heat wasn’t clue enough that we were in the Mediterranean the angry Italian man yelling at me to move definitely solidified the obvious. We made it! I got my luggage and made our way out to our shuttle service to the hotel. My friend Chris has a Mercedes and he told me that they were a dime a dozen here. I sort of didn’t believe him and said I would let him know if he was right. Well he was. They have Mercedes Mini Vans! SICK…talk about sell out. Traitors. SO, off to the hotel, its beautiful with a fabulous full on breakfast and a gorgeous pool. I am so struggling here…;) First thing on the list of things to do when in Rome….do as Vespasian would do. Which is THE Coloseum. It was amazing! You walk out of the metro and right in front of you is the Colosseum. It takes your breath away. Towering above you of all man made concrete is this tribute to the incredible ability of man….with of courses it all originating from heavenly father. I could not stop talking pictures. As we made our way around the Forum away from the Colosseum ……CRACK!.........BOOOOOOOMMM! Lightning and thunder right on top of each other…right on top of us! Before you know it we are running to the huge wall running along the perimeter of the Forum to shelter under the trees. This does absolutely nothing to help. It is raining so hard and for so long that we are all completely drenched. We are not talking Utah rain here people we are talking of standing for half an hour in a torrential down pour Florida style! It was so so so wet! What did we do you ask? Why we are interior designers, we are 99% woman on this trip, we are Swiss army wives, we…….continued our plans and our tours on foot in sometimes a foot of water on the ground muddy flip flops and all! YES MA’AM! It was great and as promised the storm did finally end and what was left was the most gorgeous sunset of golden light streaming through the dark billowy clouds in shoots of perfect light over the architecture of thousands of years…. There are no words to describe the beauty and awe of such a magnificent spectacle. We were able to make it to a museum chock full of ginormous marble body parts…such as heads and feet and things… it was so cool. We saw really great architectural pieces and sculptures. Followed by a painting gallery. We had a lot of great pictures and learning experiences there. Then we broke for dinner. Our fearless leader….Prof. Brooks lead us in a we could call it a little bit lost way in circles until we finally circled back to the Colosseum in time to get great reflection photos and sunset pictures. We also took great pictures of the Triumphal Arch of Constantine and the Forum. We had a fabulous dinner at our favorite little roman ristorante…Falcone where a delicious silver fox waited on us. Then bed at 12:30 after what felt like the longest day of my life, and could possibly be, only to get up in a few short hours to wreak havoc tourist style again on ROMA!
Photos are not working so I will post with just the photos of Day one and label...Ciao!