We are finally back from our trip and are still recovering. It was quite an adventure. When I booked the trip 16 months ago, I thought it was a good idea to leave immediately following the kids getting out of school. Dumbass. The week before was insanely hectic. I didn't get my packing done until the last minute.
The good news is that I have big kids so I put them in charge of getting their own sh*t together. I figured that it would be easy. I made a list of everything they needed to gather, photocopied it and handed it to each child. My oldest got to work right away. My youngest looked at the list, looked up and me and said, "I don't have clothes for the cruise. I need new shorts."
Keep in mind that 6 weeks prior we went shopping for clothes for the cruise, I purchased 2 dresses, 4 shirts, and 2 pairs of shorts to supplement her current wardrobe. I went into her room and pulled out some of the things I purchased. "Those aren't vacation clothes."
"Yes they are, I'm not buying you anymore clothes."
She crossed her arms. "I'm not packing then."
I shrugged, "Then I'll pick your outfits."
She protested. I pulled jean shorts from her drawer. You want to know what she said to me?
"Those don't go with anything."
PLAIN jean shorts. Random, run-of-the mill, jean shorts.
"Dude! Jean shorts go with everything."
She rolled her eyes, "OMG, mom. That is so trashy."
How? They are jean shorts. After a lot of back and forth, she reluctantly got her things together. She can be so darn difficult.
Saturday morning my dad drove us to the airport. We flew to NYC and had a long layover so I had planned to have lunch in Times Square and see a little bit of the city. My husband was having a little bit of a freak out about it. "What are we going to do with our bags? How are we going to get into the city? Are you sure we are going to be back in time?"
He knows me. I was amazed that he could possibly think I didn't plan this out ahead of time. "We will pay to store our bags in Terminal 1, we'll take the Jamaica train station to Times Square....blah, blah, blah."
That's what we did. We took the subway to Manhattan and had pizza for lunch, then we went to Times Square. The last time I was in New York City was 16 years ago, a month before 9/11. I was dating my husband then. Time passes so quickly. My oldest had been for her 10th birthday and she recounted some of her NYC adventures. We went to the Hersey store and watched some street performers. We saw the naked cowboy and ate candy outside of Madison Square Garden. Then, we headed back to the airport.
I booked our tickets to Rome through Royal Air Maroc. They were cheap as sh*t. I paid like, $460 round trip per ticket. That's how much we paid for plane tickets to Denver from Atlanta last year, to put it in perspective. My husband was really skeptical about it. "I've never heard of this airline. I bet it's sketch."
I defended my decision, "Well, it had 4 stars on the review and Delta also had 4 stars so, I'm sure it will be fine."
He was not convinced.
They lined us up to board at 9 pm and as we boarded the plane they handed us these boxes. "What is this?" I asked.
"Just something for you," the attended told me.
I was so excited. "Something for me?!?!" My family thought I was a little too excited about it. It was a little treat. It had a sandwich, a bottle of water, a banana, a little pastry. But it was for ME. I get excited about the little things in life.
We stepped onto the plane and it was a beautiful Boeing 757 Dreamliner. The plane was manufactured 10 miles from our house. How cool is that? They were playing some crazy cool arabic music and everything on the plane was labeled in English and arabic. My husband looked at me like I was insane, but I just smiled. I was excited.
I have never flown internationally and I am used to crappy, horrible flights with measly bags of pretzels. This was like a luxury airplane to me. There was a little fleece blanket, a pillow, an eye mask with socks and headphones on the seat. We sat down, settled in, browsed through the array of movies that were available, and ate the food out of our little box.
For some reason, they kept serving us food. Granted it wasn't Halls Chophouse but it was edible. Better than expected. The desserts were yummy and the coffee was better than decent. After 7 hours in the air, we landed in Morocco. The airport was in Casablanca and was small. We had to get off the plane and take a shuttle to the airport. We stepped off the plane and looked around. "We are in Africa, you guys! You'll have been in 3 continents in 24 hours. Isn't that awesome!"
I had initially tried to book a long layover in Casablanca to tour the city but it didn't work out. We had a 2 hour layover and then boarded the plane to Rome. We got to Rome around 3 pm. It was pretty painless getting out of the airport and passing through passport control. I hired a car to pick us up at the airport and the driver spoke little English. He offered my husband a cigarette. Otherwise, he didn't interact with us. He turned on the radio and bobbed his head as he drove us into the city to the hotel. You would have thought it was American radio except for the commercials in Italian.
It was so cool to look out the window and watch the city go by. I had a lot of preconceived notions of what it would be like. I was amazed at how big the city actually was, how many flowers there were, how every inch and every corner of every building was ornate, how there are just random ruins scattered about, the ridiculous amount of graffiti.
My husband then gave us all a lecture about the role of graffiti in ancient Roman culture, "In the time of Claudius....blah,blah,blah...." He's so funny.
The driver dropped us off at the hotel and helped haul our bags to the curb. I booked a hotel outside of the city center because it was so damn expensive. I initially wanted to stay at a hotel with a view of the Colosseum but at $300 a night, that was just not happening. Our hotel was in a residential area and only 2 blocks from the metro stop. It was perfect.
We checked in, took showers and then ventured out to see some of the sights. We climbed the Spanish steps, stopped at a small restaurant and had caprese sandwiches, bruschetta and a glass of wine (not the kids of course). Then we explored the area around Piazza Venezia which was massive and amazingly beautiful.
We climbed the steps and looked out at the city. It was warm and breezy and it was the perfect night. We had this moment when we realized that our dream had come true. We've talked about visit Rome for so long but it was more like a silly longing - as realistic a trip to the moon. But to be there, in that moment, with our family was surreal. I felt an intense sense of gratitude.
We were tired by the end of the night and we got on a bus to take us back to the hotel. Because we were 10 minutes outside of the city center, we wound up being the last ones on the bus. The bus stopped at the train station which, by 10:30 at night was closed. The bus driver turned off the bus, got out and said to us in broken English. "All done. The bus is broken."
We all looked at each other like, What the F is happening right now.
"We need to get to Taglimento. What do you mean the bus is broken?"
"Another bus in 20 minuti," he replied.
What other option did we have? We got off the bus and sat on the curb. We watched the bus driver eat a sandwich, talk to someone on his cell phone, and then this bitch started the bus and drove away. My husband was annoyed. I was resigned, I had heard that transportation in Italy has the tendency to be a little sketch and not on time.
The kids were concerned, "Are we going to have to sleep outside?"
"No. He said another bus is coming by in 20 minutes," I reassured them.
My husband chuckled, "He also said the bus was broken and we all know he lied about that."
The bus did show up 20 minutes later and before you know it, we were on our way. We got off at the wrong stopped, walked 5 more blocks than we should have and at 11:30 pm were passing by a small restaurant that was around the corner from our hotel. There was a woman outside gathering plates. "Are you still open?" I asked.
She nodded and escorted us to an outdoor patio beneath the street. There were tables of people drinking wine and eating. They would stay open a while. They had the most delicious menu. We ordered hand made pasta and pizza with crust that melted in your mouth. It ruined American pizza for us forever. They were kind and hospitable to us and fawned over our daughters. We didn't leave until 12:30 am.
We got back to the hotel and we all crawled into bed, exhausted. "So, what do you guys think?" I asked.
"It's so awesome," my youngest said with a yawn.
"Except for the part when the bus driver abandoned us and we thought we'd have to sleep outside," my oldest added.
I laughed, "But it will make a good story and we'll laugh about it for years to come. All's well that ends well."
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