All Roads Lead to Rome

This year’s annual Christmas trip brings the entire family to Italy.

After a long and sleepless flight, we land in Rome. We begin our foray in the land of Emperors with an extended, hour-long standing tour of the Leonardo da Vinci Airport. When we plod, exhausted, into Terminal B, our driver, arranged for us by the good folks at Gate 1 Travel, is nowhere to be found.

Parks, Waiting for the Shuttle

Three cell phone calls later, I’m speaking to a contact at Gate 1, who tells me, in broken English, that she does not speak English. (She’s ahead of me. I know so little Italian, I can’t even say, “I don’t speak Italian” in Italian!)

Ultimately, we resort to communicating in short, simple phrases: “We here. Driver not.”

Driver shows up in ten minutes … but, in addition to picking us up, he’s also looking for the Schwartz party. The Schwartzes, bless their hearts, never show … so, an hour alter, we’re still standing in the airport, waiting for a ride.

At that point, everyone’s had enough, so I call Gate 1 again and say, “Wait hour. Must go now!” The message works; Driver’s cell phone rings, he answers a series of quick questions, and then says, “We go!”

The Hotel Beverly Hills in Rome is in the northern part of the city. The hotel is nice enough — nicer, in many ways, than the American Hotel in Amsterdam — but lacks one major essential: Internet connectivity. The hotel’s wireless network costs twenty-four dollars a day to access, and cannot be received by guests on our floor, who are too far from the base station. Result? Clyde and I must stake out spots in the lobby to tap into our email and get business done.

Our tour guide meets the group at 6:00 to walk us around the corner to what I expect will be a bad meal at a tourist-driven restaurant. Instead, we receive excellent, spicy plates of pasta, cheese-stuffed ravioli, huge platters of veal in white wine sauce, salads, white chocolate tarts, and strong, strong coffee. (Peyton downed three expressos on a dare; whether or not he’ll sleep tonight remains to be seen.) The meal is the high point of a jet-lagged day.

The meal is worlds better than our first taste of gelatto, which comes from a gelateria across the street, which I suspect is the Baskin Robbins of gelaterias. We’ll try several more tomorrow, and see if I’m right.

In the morning, we’re off to museums and ruins; I’ll post more when I can.