In Transition

Today (11/30 Friday), we left the hotel early to get some breakfast (espresso and croissant) and to see if the luggage check was open at the train station since the strike was going on and it was open, small miracle. Once we checked out of the hotel, we checked our luggage and then headed out around town. We checked out the daily mercato for our neighborhood. We are looking forward to doing some shopping as they had great selections of produce, meat and seafood. We then went to the bakery near our apartment which has the most beautiful things, although there is a price to go with it.

Next stop, the Coloseum and the Forum. We did not go in either since we had Parilla but we took some pictures and reveled in the beautiful sunny day. We walked over to the Vittorio Emanuelle II (wedding cake) monument/building and ate our pastries sitting on the edge of the fountain. (Ray & Pat – this is the fountain where we had our picture taken together). We then moved on to the Pantheon and the Trevi fountain. We were really surprised to find more people at the Trevi fountain than when we were there at the end of September in 2000. We did a little more walking and then decided to return to the station and wait/sit until it was time to collect our luggage and head to the apartment as we could not check in until 4:00. Once we got to the station and saw all of the trains parked and all of the people just standing around we knew we had made the right decision to leave Atrani a day early.

Our apartment is huge. It has a living room with a formal dining table, a bedroom with a queen size bed and a big window on to the courtyard, a second very small bedroom, a kitchen with small dining table and a bathroom. There is a huge hall that connects all of the rooms and the ceilings are at least 12 feet high. It is on the 5th floor, but luckily there is an elevator.