The Beginning...

Well here we are on the cruise enjoying the beautiful view on the Mediterranean Sea, but before I tell you about what’s going on now I will tell you about the past few days.

My friend and I left Maui around 3:05 PM on a direct flight to Portland Oregon. We arrived at about 11:30 PM and my dad was nice enough to come pick us up and take us to their home. It was past midnight and we were tired, but I wanted to change suitcases and charge all my electronics. I went to bed about 1:30 AM and was not able to sleep, but soon my alarm went off. It was 3:30 AM.

We got everything together, had some coffee and soon we were on our way again to the airport. My dad was nice enough to get us so early and take us back to the airport.

We were there about 4:45 AM and we were soon checked in and at the gate. The flight to New York was about 5 hours and we had great seats. The first seats in the couch section, lots of leg room, and no one sitting next to us. We had our own individual screens and were able to play games or watch TV (of course many of them cost money but there were some free ones also). We were soon in JFK. There we got some food, walked around and soon we were on our next flight to Roma, Italia. We had OK seats and around us there were a lot of LOUD and excited people. The food was bad, the movies I’ve already seen and the service was not so good. But after 8.5 hours we were in Roma.

We arrived around 7:30 AM and after getting our stamps in the passport we were off to get our bags. One lady came up to us and asked in full spanish if we knew where something was but since neither of us speak spanish we were not sure what she was saying (for those of you wondering, yes I know Italian and spanish sound alike, but she did specifically say “something espaniol”). We were not sure how to help her but I hope she figured it out. We found the belt the luggage was coming on and we waited... and waited.... and waited... After a while no more bags were coming. Almost everyone was gone. We asked some one what to do and we were off to Costumer Service. While in line I saw someone that looked familiar (Before this I was looking and looking for anyone that seemed like they belonged to our group because we were not sure at this point how we were going to get to the hotel and plus we did not have out hotel name to even take a taxi there). Anyways back to finding the person I knew. I could not remember her name but she seemed to know mine and I was not about to loose the opportunity to get a ride to the hotel. I talked to her and she gave me the hotel info and said she would be waiting for us to take the bus with everyone else (about 10 people).

We did the paper work for the luggage and we went to meet everyone else. My friend D. also just arrived so she was waiting for her luggage. We went out side of the airport and there was a girl holding up a sign with our group name on it. We met others who were already in Roma and after everyone else we were off to our bus. Our group escort was Saia. She helped to make sure we all got to the hotel safely.

When at the hotel we had time to change some money and relax for a little while before meeting with everyone. We had introductions and I was real surprised to see how many people from Maui were there and I did not know they were coming. We grabbed a quick lunch (yummy bread with tomatoes, yummy cheese with really yummy eggplant - it was the best sandwich ever) before heading on our first tour.

Well that’s it for now. Coming soon: Details on our first and second tour, and cruise stories.

Jilda