Who has time for jet lag?

-
Our hotel is right by the Pantheon. You never really know what you’ll find when you book a hotel in a city that you’ve never been to, but this was more than perfect! Our biggest challenge with hotels was finding quad rooms that had two twin beds in addition to a double bed since my kids (boy and girl) are far beyond the age of sharing a bed! And we didn’t want the added expense of two rooms, as well as I wasn’t comfortable with them in a separate room from me and DH in a hotel. This is where all of my online research really paid off! I got the best advice from some well known travel websites, both known for land and cruise travel.  I spent hours upon hours just chatting away to make this the perfect trip!  So, anyway, I knew Albergo del Senato would be a splurge, but it was our first night and it was only one night after all, so let’s start the trip with a bang!

The four of us had their “mini-apartment” which is ultra modern in their ancient building. My parents were given a free upgrade to one of their nicest rooms because their room took longer than expected to be ready. Their room had a ceiling that could rival some of the cathedrals we would later visit!

Both were outstanding accommodations and the staff there was superb! The rate included a nice breakfast which was a bit more than a small European breakfast, but was typical pastries, meats, cheeses, cereals, fruit and if I remember there may have been eggs as well? 

Most of the group was exhausted when we arrived, but Megan and I were still going on adrenalin I suppose. We were anxious to get out and see the Pantheon! Everyone else went in for naps, but the two of us went out to keep taking in all there was to see!
Our first visit into the Pantheon - we were just in awe. It's so much bigger than you can imagine, and the hole in the ceiling - you stare at it and wonder just how it was built! Megan looked at me when we were in there and just had the biggest smile on her face and just blurted out the most grateful Thank You ever for being able to be there! You just have to love when an 11 year old can appreciate something like this! It was a great moment just the two of us!


Raphael's Tomb - everywhere you looked, everything you saw...it was just one impressive WOW!  

 After our visit to the Pantheon, we knew where to head next, one last stop before going in to nap before our big night out! Gelato of course! By chance there was a gelato place right next door to our hotel! Megan got banana and I had Nutella and banana. We went out to the fountain in the Piazza and just soaked up all there was about Rome. All the negative comments we heard before coming just vanished from my mind. I knew right then and there - I was in LOVE with Rome! I would be back here again for sure! This was a city I could connect to for sure!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

You'd better Belize it!

-
Image
That's right - Belize.  The first question so many people would ask was, where's Belize? They hadn't even heard of the country!  This was common I found because Belize was formerly known as British Honduras and didn't change it's name until 1973.  The second question I was asked was why do you want to go to Belize?  Belize suddenly began popping up to me in my obsessive travel research about two years ago.  I had been planning our second trip to Costa Rica and kept seeing great travel information about Belize and of course I wanted to see what was the big draw!  K and I have been to Mexico several times and had been to Costa Rica once previously and since I was planning our second trip to Costa Rica I kept Belize in the back of my mind for a future trip.  I started to do some research and found Belize has the second largest barrier reef in the world!  Now that's something!  Neither K nor I dive, but we both enjoy snorkeling so right there that was a great opp
Read more

San Pedro, hustle and bustle!

-
Image
Ambergris Caye…it’s an interesting place to be! As I mentioned in some previous posts, we chose a resort to the north of the town of San Pedro. Portofino is only accessible by water taxi and it’s about a fifteen minute boat ride to get there. But when you get into the heart of the island the pace of life picks up. It’s still a sleepy island town by all means. But there’s much more hustle and bustle! The first thing we noticed was the primary means of transportation are golf carts. There’s a few taxi vans, but most people are driving golf carts. This is certainly unique! There’s a certain charm about this for sure. Our main reasons for going into town were to get to the dive shops, but that only brought us to the docks…to eat lunch and dinner once or twice and the obligatory souvenir shopping. We didn’t get a chance to really see any of the other hotels in the area. In my obsessive research before the trip, there were quite a few that looked nice, but now that I was there I
Read more

A Beautiful Morning

-
Image
Imagine opening your eyes and seeing this.... Imagine that! I woke up early one morning and pulled back the cotton curtains to see if the sun had risen up above the sea yet, and this was what greeted me. I just had to grab my camera! I went out on our porch and sat there just in awe of the beauty of the place we were. How lucky we were to be here! How lucky to experience such beauty! I snapped a picture with my cell phone to send home to the kids. I wished they were here to share this moment with me. There were so many parts of this adventure that they would love, and yet so many parts that would be enjoyed so much more in a few more years. The timing just wasn’t quite right yet. I enjoyed this amazing sunrise alone…I didn’t wake up K yet. He wouldn’t quite appreciate the beauty of it the way I did. He was sound asleep still. He’d enjoy it in a picture. For me, my day was already perfect.
Read more