Day 1 in Rome

Wow, what a full day.  We normally don't post anything until we've finished with a city but it was such a good day, we wanted to share right away. 

Colin and I have agreed that if we can walk somewhere, we will, just so we can avoid the buses.  (The weather is changing and it seems so many people are sick.)  We are walking machines!  We think we clear on average about 10k a day, sometimes more, sometimes less.  Our shoes we bought brand new before the trip are getting really worn in already.

Anyhow, we got to Rome this afternoon.  What a change from Naples!  The architecture is breathtaking.  I mean, we were fascinated with buildings that were hundreds of years old.  The ones here are thousands of years old.  We decided to take the walking tour at 5:30pm tonight with the company New Rome Free Tours.  Our tour guide was the infamous Stefano that everyone seems to have heard about on TripAdvisor.  We definitely recommend him if anyone comes to Rome.  He taught us all sorts of things about Rome and how to do things the way the Romans do--like how to drink from a fountain, eat spaghetti, cross a street, toss a coin into a fountain, and even what not to do--like order cappucino after dinner.  Cappucino is a morning drink, and you're not supposed to eat the foam off the top with a spoon--you drink it, not eat it.  If you cut your spaghetti with a knife or eat your cappucino, you're a "barbarian."  All jokes of course...he was seriously entertaining.  The 2-hour tour turned into a 2.5-hour tour, and by the time we were finished, we were famished!

We went to an Italian restaurant that Stefano recommended to us and ended up sitting next to 3 ladies that were on the tour with us:  Bonnie, Sherry, and Diana from Florida.  They were on an all-ladies trip, blitzing Italy in 1 week before returning home to Florida.  We had great conversation--pretty much told them our life story.  The topic of marriage came up and they calculated that they had 93 years of marriage between the 3 of them!  And they're all still happily married.  They said the key to a happy marriage is to take the time to do all-girls and all-guys trips every so often.  Agreed. 

We were eating our limone sorbetto dessert and Diana thought we were so cute, she had to take a picture for us.  Then the bills came and Colin and I were trying to figure out what everything was when Diana asked to see our bill.  We didn't think anything of it...thought she was helping us figure out our bill.  Next thing we knew, they were handing the bill back with money!  They paid for our whole dinner, and would not take no for an answer!  They said for us to take it as good luck for a great future together.  We were so shocked we didn't know how to react.  We gave them all hugs as they left the restaurant.  That was so sweet of them.  As I'm writing this, I'm still sort of speechless...for some strangers to be so generous is not anything we've ever come across before.