Capuchio Designs

Our alarm awoke us at 4:45 a.m. on the morning of May 28th, 2010.  Believe me that this early wake-up call didn’t bother us a bit, since we weren’t sure we’d be flying out of DIA at all.

Our original flight was booked with British Airlines, but due to an employee strike, our flight wasn’t happening.  Thank goodness our tour company had the “insight” to change our tickets so that we could fly via American Airlines.

Instead of a leisurely morning on Friday, we were up and at ’em.  We actually were quite happy about this change which meant we would fly about 2 1/2 hours to O’Hare in Chicago, then change planes and continue non-stop to Rome, arriving on time to catch the hotel shuttle.  (Thus alleviating the anxiety of trying to communicate in Italian to a cab driver, while exhausted from lack of sleep).

Of course my husband noticed “Air Force One” flying past the airport window at O’Hare.  This was because President Obama and his entourage were arriving in Chicago for some business.  There were security, military-like helicopters as well.  As a result, our flight was delayed, as the entire airport shut down for about 30 minutes.

Our flight to Rome was long!  We tried to get some sleep on the 9 1/2 hour flight from Chicago, and adjust to Italy time which is 8 hours ahead, but it was quite difficult.  We thought we flew over Monaco and may have seen some of Tuscany’s rolling hills.  We were so excited!

My photos from the airplane were no good, and neither were our self-portraits on the plane, ala Diane.  I looked like a stretched-out-rubber-necker and Dave looked like he had a glass eye.  I guess you could say we don’t travel well.  My soft Target pants ended up looking like stretched out toddler clothing, while so many of the other lovely ladies on board were in their high heels and skin tight clothing, and full-on make-up … maybe on the way back home.

At the Rome airport (9:15 a.m), there was no customs, and we only needed to show our passport, and we were in!  We were faced with hundreds of people holding signs for tour groups and others.  Confusing!  We finally were able to figure out where to meet our tour group shuttle.  I must say that it was glorious to be led by a sign-on-a-stick holding Italian lady to a nice new tour bus ridden only by four people to the hotel … yeah boys it was a Mercedes!

Then we were off to the Sheraton Roma Hotel via the tour “coach”.

We were greeted by our New Zealand, fluent in Italian, tour guide.  Because we were so sleep deprived, we took a two hour nap then explored the beautiful, plush,  grounds of the hotel.  50’s on the outside, clean and pretty on the inside.

Later this evening, we met our entire tour group for drinks and snacks at the hotel lounge.  Almost all of them were quite a bit older than us.  There were 34 people on this tour, with only two women traveling as singles.  An Australian couple, Denise and Tim chose to sit with us.  They were quite outdoorsy and delightful as most Australian’s we’ve met are.

We passed on an optional excursion into the center of Rome for dinner and entertainment this night.  Our exhaustion caught up to us.  We stayed behind and visited with a nice Aussie family of Norris and Fay, parents of two adult daughters, Troy and Leigh (think of my sister and me).  It was nice to chat with them as they were quite a hoot and had already been in Rome for two days before, and had lots of good information to share.

Then … off to bed.

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