3/10/09 Wow, what a day!! Let’s see… the train, I won’t lie, was horrible. We slept ok, well, daddy slept great, but the bed was small and up high and pretty hard, so it was hard for me and my big ole belly to roll over, and the rocking motion was nice to lull me to sleep, but everytime we stopped, I woke up. We didn’t actually get into Rome until about 2:15pm in the afternoon. The train was suppose to arrive at 10:15am. Count the hours, we boarded the train at 9pm. I was quietly furious. I had a good long cry and felt better though. We arrived at Rome, and decided to walk to our hotel instead of taking the subway. A nice walk, not too long. Our hotel doesn’t have free wifi though, I’m kinda upset about that!! I want to video chat with you kids!!!! I miss you sooo much!! I get tears a lot and have to quickly think of other things to occupy my mind. There are a lot of little café’s that have wifi, so I will update the blog while drinking a hot chocolate.  the one in rome tastes like hot pudding, and it is very thick too. The one in paris tasted divine.

Ok, onto what we did since the short time we arrived in Rome this afternoon. Let’s see. First stop was the hotel, getting checked in and showers. Hot showers. Oooh, that felt sooo goooood, even though the water pressure sucks and the shower door is broke. Then we walked to the Trevi fountain, because we had to pick up our audience with the pope tickets, and it was in that area. Rome streets (or the maps, take your pick), are soooo much easier to navigate! We didn’t get lost AT ALL today!! And still were able to enjoy walking the streets and just marveling at all the buildings. Anyway… we get to the Office of the American councel of the bishops (or something like that), to get our papal tickets, and we were greeted by a very American sister. She is so American in fact, she grew up in Saginaw, MI!!!!
There was also a priest there, very American accent, and all English was spoken. It was such a breath of fresh air to be able to hold a long conversation with someone and get that feeling of home. It was great. She showed us on the map where we will be sitting. When I booked these tickets, I thought we would be pretty far away from the pope, but actually we are sitting right THERE. There are four sections right by the pope, and we have special tickets and get to sit in the upper right hand side, the pope speaks from the middle. We are like up on the top, and she said the whole bottom will be FULL of people. He does speak some of the 1.5 hours in English, and, get this… are you ready?? All the religious items we want to have blessed, there is a time during our visit he will ask and he will actually bless them right there!! So we went shopping and got all the rosaries I said I would buy for everyone tonight. Sister told us of a shopping district that has a bunch of religious, high quality items so we went there right after talking with her for a little while. Oh, and if you check the Vatican website after …7am tomorrow (will I even have this posted by then??? LOL), you MIGHT see a picture of us. That’s right, we actually have a running chance to meet, face to face, THE POPE!!! I can’t tell you how excited I am for tomorrow.

So, after we bought all our goodies for tomorrow, we went through the pantheon. Wow. Pictures can not even begin to describe how huge this place is. The cement used to build it (and this was AD 100something, if I recall right) is 19 FEET thick!! Way awesome. After the pantheon, Sister suggested we head over to a little piazza that had a couple fountains and artists selling their work, and have dinner there in front of the fountains. It was dark, and we found a little café that had candlelight, and we had our dinner there by candlelight under the warmers. The weather in rome today was awesome. I’m not sure how warm it was, but very sunny and when we first got in, we had sweatshirts on (no coats) and we were warm by the time we got to the hotel. When we left the hotel for a late lunch, it was already starting to cool off, but not anywhere near as cold as Paris was.

After dinner, we walked back to the hotel. It was about a 30 minute walk. That is when we found out we don’t have wifi. The reception lady is pretty cranky too. She sounds like she got up on the wrong side of the bed. LOL. But we are not in the hotel room long, so we don’t mind if it is not perfect.

Ok, that is all for tonight. Hopefully sometime tomorrow morning we can find a café with wifi and upload this and some pics to photobucket before we go to the audience with the pope.
Going to go call you boys and then when you girls get home call you too! Daddy and I are awefully tired tonight! Love and miss you lots and lots and lots and lots!!! Love, mommy and daddy.