After leaving Orlando, the flight to Charlotte was a bit wavy, enough so that they “were not able to” serve any snacks. More likely, they wanted to save money. But it was a short 1 hour trip, so no huge loss.

Unfortunately, the flight to Rome was worse. They did serve snacks and dinner, but it was very turbulent the whole trip. I only got 2 hours of sleep.

Not only that but the plane had come in a bit late, only about 5 minutes, but we didn’t get airborne for almost an hour, including at least 10 minutes sitting in the taxiway, no apparent reason, just sitting.

We arrived at 10 AM, local time, 17 hours after I was dropped off at Orlando.

Going through Customs & Border Control was a breeze, the guy was busy texting and barely looked at my passport before returning it and passing me through. I didn’t even get a passport stamp. I was gypped.

I bought tickets for the train into Rome-proper, but we got onto the wrong train, or so the conductor said. We exited at the stop he suggested, to transfer to another train, but that train never seemed to come. We found out that it is a holiday, May Day. Apparently a lot of people are off work, and train service is shortened. We were able to get onto a different train and went down to the next station, where we transferred to the subway, which I had more familiarity, but I forgot to add the folder with all the subway maps onto my iPad, so I had to rely on my memory, which everyone knows is perfect. 😉

We finally got to the hostel a mere six hours after getting to Italy. We did get to see a bit while riding around, and got a good workout going up and down the billion or so stairs that are in the train/subway stations.

Fortunately, the hostel owner was just coming out on the street as we approached and led us up to our room.

There is a large concert going on nearby in the park, probably for May Day. The street in from of the hostel is blocked of to cars on our side, with food venders as far as one can see. We did have the willpower to hold off until we had an actual meal before going to the pastry vender. I am not certain what we bought, but it was pure heaven.

We walked around the area a bit before going back to the room, while Mom went to wash up, I passed into a coma for an hour or so, despite the music and traffic.

Mom didn’t last much longer, she went to bed about 8 o’clock.

I will probably be not too far behind her. I am soooo tired and I know we will be doing a lot of walking tomorrow and the next day and the next and the next and …