It’s almost noon on Sunday and here we are at the Manchester Airport awaiting our flight in the first leg of our journey. Our flight leaves at 2:22 so we’re early but I’m good with that, we’re through security and all set. There’s a Quizno’s down the corridor for when we get hungry and a place to set my the laptop up at the boarding gate. From here we go to Washington, D.C. and then on to Rome – that’s right, ROME! After that it’s on to Florence and then to Venice.  We’re hoping to rent a car to go from Rome to Florence, thats when I hope to be able to do some painting of the countryside of Tuscany. The long range weather says rain then so we’ll have to be flexible. So, while we wait, I’m downloading podcast guides to Italy, now its from Rick Steves web site. Previously it was Italyguides.com.

A little over 24 hours have passed with very little sleep, it’s 4:00 p.m. Rome time and we’re finally checked into our hotel room. The trip itself was uneventful, except Rick and I both being pulled out of line for a pat down before boarding the plane to Rome.  I called over to Rick “and you told me this trip was going to be romantic” which caused the TSA folks to laugh a little.

We arrived at 7:30 a.m. so we dropped off our suitcases off at the hotel and went out exploring while our room was being readied. The mix of ancient ruins in a thriving modern city is amazing. We made it to the santa Maria Maggiore Bassilica. It was beautiful, simply put. After a delicious pizza we decided to hop on a tour bus to get a sense of the city and get off our feet. It was chilly today as well. Hopefully we’ll get a good night’s sleep and have a full day of touring tomorrow. We’ll check the weather and plan the rest of the week accordingly.