So day one was just as long as I expected it to be, but SO nice.
After the long layover in JFK, and the even longer flight to Rome, we hit the ground running – literally.
Our flight landed an hour early, so our plane actually had to stop on the tarmac, so we got to walk across that to get to our shuttle.
After all of the boring luggage grabbing, we met our tour guide, Matteo Troiani. We’ve known him for all of about 12 hours, but it seems like we’ve been with him for weeks – which isn’t a bad thing, because he’s super nice.
Then we went “brief sight-seeing” as I like to call it, which is basically like speed dating, but with cultural sites. We spent 15 minutes at the Trevi Fountain before spending another 15 minutes exploring the Pantheon, then broke for lunch.
Josh Croup and I went to a cute little pizzeria and got a Margherita pizza, which we found out is named after a former ruler of Rome’s wife, and then met back up with the group to head to Piazza Navona.
Following the speed dating tour, we got settled in to our hotel (and I took a brief nap) before heading to Ristorante da Massi for our welcome dinner. Two plate fulls of amazing Italian meals followed by the best tiramisu I’ve ever had in my life, and it made the 33 hours of being on the move a lot more bearable.
I am going to include a “photo album” of sorts in a post following this one to highlight some of the best parts of the first day here in Rome, so keep an eye out for that!
Grazie, ciao!