Italy, Day 4

Subtitle: “Suite!”

One thing I forgot to mention yesterday: a young Asian girl stopped us on the street just as we came out of seeing The Last Supper.  She asked us for directions to a street.  What took me completely by surprised was realizing she asked us in Italian.  An Asian woman asking two people who are clearly American tourists (we totally stood out in Milan) directions in Italian.  Weird, huh?  But the coolest thing is that Mark answers back in Italian.  I’ve been pestering Mark the past few days to speak in Italian more often to people.  So when he does talk with the locals, I love it.  OK, moving on…

Ah, a travel day.  We said ciao to Milano and headed out at 8 a.m., along with everyone else.  Traffic was not fun, but with Groovy Nuvi we made it with no problems.  Nothing very exciting happened on the 7 hour drive from Milano to Roma.  Mark let me snooze for 40 minutes.  I figured it was ok to take a cat nap since we were driving through Piacenza, which is the city I drove through two days earlier. 

Unfortunately, this is the only picture I will have of Florence.  We have so much packed in to this trip and we had to prioritize what we wanted to see, so Florence will have to be on another Italy trip, along with Venice. 

We dropped off the rental car at the airport then headed into the heart of Rome by taxi, which was the greatest hour of the day.  Mark started chatting with the taxi driver in Italian and once the driver realized Mark spoke Italian, the two men spent the rest of the drive talking.  They covered everything from Mark’s mission, to politics (including Obama), to gypsies who hang out in the park.  Then he became our tour guide, too.  He was an awesome guy and circled the Colosseum just to give us a glimpse of it and he gave us some pointers where to eat and places to avoid. 

After checking in, we headed to the sixth floor to our room.  Upon entering, my breath was taken away.  At first Mark thought my reaction to the room was disappointment, but boy was he wrong.  We were upgraded to the Presidential Suite!  We are still in disbelief.  And Mark is paranoid that we are going to get charged for it, but we have checked and double checked our confirmation email from months ago and the hotel clerk said we are using points for our stay…but Mark’s still paranoid.  We have a 300 sq. foot living room, two bathrooms, a walk-in closet, a gigantic bedroom and a terrace with an amazing view of St. Peter’s cathedral.  I have to say that this completely makes up for our Milano hotel. 

Our living room.

One of the bathrooms.

Bedroom.  

And our view at dusk. 

Tomorrow we hit the Vatican for our guided tour.  Ciao!