Landed in Rome this morning - Dec 24th, around 9:30 am local time. Kids of course are insisting to live in Detroit time. By the time we navigated the Taxi cab jungle and checked into our hotel it was 11:30am. Everyone was exhausted. The plan was to take quick shower and go grab some food and then rest and go out in the evenjng. While some showered, the others napped. The showers shortened and the naps became longer and pretty soon it was 2pm ... so we woke up sleepy kids and found ourselves on streets of Rome, looking for grub, with Help from our friend Yelp. We reached the first pick and found it was closed for holidays, the second promised 'No Stop' service from 11am to 11pm and the proprietor stood on the street explaining the menu- perfect! We had a very nice lunch there - we ended up ordering twice as much food as we needed and Aadi fell asleep after first course. Anyway, we enjoyed the food - and after a hunt for an ATM to draw cash, as no credit card was accepted, we paid and made our way back to the hotel, half asleep.
4 hours later, it was though but necessary to wake up the kids so can start our transition into Rome time zone. After much whining and bickering we walked to the Colloseum- it was an amazing experience to see it at night. The streets were all empty (eerily so) given this was Christmas Eve and so was the Colloseum.
We wandered through the streets for another hour or so, stopped at a mini market to pick up some snacks and wine, got some food at a fast food place and finally finished the days eating at the rooftop patio of our hotel - counting down seconds to Christmas!
A Christmas Eve to remember for a long time.
