All Roads Lead to Rome

While this may have been true at some point what it doesn't say is that not all roads lead to the convent in Rome.  Before starting my bus tour through Europe I got the chance to spend three days in beautiful Rome.  While there I met up with my good friend from Liberty University, Kristina.  Kristina is currently serving as a missionary in Romania for a year.  But finding her in the huge city proved to be difficult.

I arrived in the morning with no problems.  I had hired a car to take me from the airport to the convent where we were staying for a very good price and just like they said they were waiting for me.  I arrived to discover that Kristina and group had not yet check in.  This surprised me as their flight arrived before mine, but I didn't panic we had a plan, meet at the Vatican at 11 for our 11:30 tour.  So after checking in I took the bus to the Vatican City.  When I arrived I was astonished by how many people there were.  The place was huge and so busy so I did the logical thing, I looked around the monuments, the fountain, the steps.  Finally I found an information center where I learned that the museum entrance is different from where I was currently.  At this point I only had 15 min. to walk to the entrance, find the group and start the tour.  Well I did arrive at the museum but could not find them anywhere but it was not 11:35.  I assumed that they had started the tour so I bought a ticket and the lady dropped me off at the first point of the tour.

I ended up wondering around for hours looking for them.  Finally I decided that I would simply follow the day's itinerary on my own and hoped that I would find them some where along the way.  This of course never happened but I did see everything that had been planned.  At 7:30 I decided to call it a night and head back to the convent.  And this is where the real trouble began...

I am pretty sure that I took every bus that Rome has to offer.  I kept asking the bus drivers for help and they tried their best but no one seemed to know where this convent was.  What was worse was that I had lost my paper which had the address and phone number to the place on it.  At 10:30 I gave in and called Cristina, my host mother, and asked her to look it up for me and to call the convent to tell them I would miss the 11 pm curfew.  She of course was worried but was able to give me the address and phone number for the place.  At one point I have about 5 bus drivers helping me at the same time.  They seemed confident that if I took bus x to such and such and switched to bus y it would take me right there.    It was all I could do not to start crying right then and there.  I was so tired and my feet hurt and I could not bare the thought of taking any more buses so I simply asked them to help me get a taxi.

Rome is not like New York, where you can just hail a cab on the side of the street, you actually have to do to a taxi stop.  A very nice off duty bus driver drove me in the not in service bus to the taxi stop.  The taxi driver didn't know where the convent was either so he called the number Cristina had given me to get directions. Finally at about 12:15 I arrived "home" where I am pretty sure I fell asleep even before my head hit the pillow.

The next day I finally got to meet up with Kristina and her group and the next two days were wonderful.  We saw all the major sites and we could not have asked for more perfect weather...well almost, but that's another story!

Love from Liberty,
Peggy

Salad in Spanish

Well I promised more stories from my Europe tour trip so here is one that should make you laugh.  On the trip there were two girls from Columbia.  As such they spoke spanish which proved to be useful when we were in Italy as the two languages are very closely related.  In Florence a few of us went for a walk and to find something to eat.  Joanna kept saying how hungry she was and could we please find someplace to sit down and have dinner.  Well we finally found the local hang out place and we were getting ready to order. Joanna decided that she wanted a salad and she asked the waiter about an item on the menu.  She gathered that it was a pasta and lettuce salad that had cheese in it.

When we got our food I had a wonderful plate of ravioli, another girl a pizza, and the other a pasta dish.  When Joanna got her dish she was very surprised to see a plate of 5 pieces of cheese arranged on her plate with a few sprigs of lettuce in the middle.  It was possibly one of the funniest things that happened but to make it even better we had not even controlled our laughter when a man trying to get us to donate money to some cause or another walked in and put a card and a mouse keychain right next to her plate of cheese.  Of course we laughed even harder and then took pictures of the mouse next to the cheese.  Joanna was a good sport and ate the whole thing.  It just goes to show that although somethings may be close in language it is important to know the differences.

Love from Liberty,
Peggy