Rome revisited and Jan's Birthday

We landed in Civitavecchia at about 4 in the morning. We packed our bags the night before and they were picked up late in the night. We rose early, around 6:30, packed our pajamas in our carryon luggage. After double checking our rooms for things left behind, we headed to breakfast. John and Dan had the great idea of getting breakfast in the dining room instead of the overcrowded Oceanview Café. We were waited on by about 15 waiters! It was a nice breakfast and we leisurely finished and headed off the boat. All was easy and relaxed until we couldn’t find one of Janet’s suitcases! After 20 minutes or so of looking through thousands of bags, Janet was planning on all the new clothes she would buy when the cruise line paid her to replace her clothes. Darn it all if Judy didn’t find the bag! No new clothes, but at least Janet had something to wear on the plane home. One of our vans was a little late picking us up at the cruise port. Turns out the wait to get to the port was 40 minutes! That was stopped in line after the van got to the port, The line of cars and vans and busses was over 1 km long. We were lucky to have only a short wait and were loaded the flock of bags and headed back to Rome.

Another Italian mattina! We arrived at the hotel, dropped off bags and headed out to do the one last thing we didn’t do in the first 5 days. Some went to St Peter’s, some to Piazza Navona, some to the Pantheon for gelato and some to Intimissi for pajamas! A trip to Europe isn’t complete without a trip to Intimissi, according to Ron. Ron and John and Sue and I were able to walk by the hotel where we stayed with Lindsey and Kyle on our first trip to Rome. We saw the wine bar where Lindsey ordered a sandwich with white truffle oil and I finally figured out what that horrid smell was! Haven’t liked truffles since! So we got a few photos to replace the ones we misplaced from our first trip. I’ll have to photoshop in Lindsey and Kyle 7 years younger. We had lasagne and pizza, beer and vino bianco, walked down Via Condotti, window shopping at Gucci, Ferragamo, Versace, Louis Vitton, Hermes, you name it, if it is a big name and expensive, we walked by the store! After the Pantheon, the best gelato (Fico d’India and kiwi) at Della Palma, we headed back to deposit our bags in our room and blog. You lucky fans!
I hope to get out a few more words from Europe. Today is Jan’s birthday and the plan is to have some dinner together. We will headed to Piazza Navona and try to get gelato at Tre Scalia - the birthplace of Death by Chocolate. That’s the way to celebrate a birthday! I hope to get in a quick review before we head out tomorrow morning for JFK.