Reunion in Rome!

Saturday, 7/31/10

Matthew and I at the Baths of Caracalla, waiting for Rigoletto to start

 The trip to Fiumicino Airport to pick up my son, Matthew, was fairly uneventful. His plane was delayed about an hour and a half because of mechanical trouble. The plane he was supposed to fly in on needed its engines replaced, something discovered during routine maintenance checks. So the flight could have been much later. But Continental Airlines found another plane ready to cross the Atlantic. It was a smaller plane, so some passengers were rerouted and others got bumped. But Matthew got here OK.

 After getting his things situated back at our hotel, including presenting his passport at the desk, which all of the hotels require  now due to a government regulation, we headed to the Vatican. We took a quick tour of the museums, visited St. Peter's Basilica, found a quick bite to eat, and headed back to the hotel so Matthew could nap for a couple of hours. His favorite snack so far is gelato. The chocolate was especially good. My favorite snack yesterday was a chocolate-filled cornetto, a type of pastry, and a cappuccino I grabbed on the way to the train for less than 2 Euros. It tasted too good to be true.

 In the evening we headed to the Baths of Caracalla for Verdi's opera, Rigoletto. It was fun together, and the baths are a fantastic setting for an opera. And the singing was fantastic. I like Aida better, however. That's playing tomorrow night but I didn't want to be up late on Sunday if I can help it, since we have a bus to meet on Monday morning. 

After the opera was an adventure! The late night transportation in Rome is rather spotty. We assumed, wrongly, that there would be some extra buses heading to Trastevere after the opera. There were not. According to a sign, a night tram runs from 11:30 PM to 3 AM but we waited a long time and saw no sign of it. Finally the group of us, about 10 in all, hailed a cab, who called two more cabs on the radio, and we got back to the hotel by 1 AM. 

Not too bad. 

Matthew must have been particularly happy to see the hotel room since he had slept only about 4 hours including his nap.