I am writing this from a state of complete exhaustion. We have been up for a day and a half, having just napped a little on the plane. Excuse any errors as I fired this post off before bed.
Monday in New York was a low key day. We had farewell bagels at a local place with Kory's family. New York bagels... I could probably eat four in one sitting because I am a carb monster. So good.
Then we wandered around the Lower East side for a few hours, making it up to the Flat Iron building, which we love and have over our bed. We figured we better walk for a while since we were going to be sitting on the plane for a long time. We had late check out at 2 since I am Holiday Inn elite from the nights I have to spend at the fabulous Holiday Inn Express Oshkosh for work... That finally paid off in some way at least!
We returned from our walk at 2 exactly, got an Uber and headed to JFK. The Uber cost about $60 and took around 45 min. Definitely the most expensive Uber I have taken, but worth it so we didn't have to hump our bags around the train.
At JFK, check in went smooth at the British Airways counter... the nice guy waived Kory's second bag $100 fee, so that was swell of him. We got through security in a couple minutes and had two hours to kill. We got okay salads and overpriced Aloha Mules at an airport restaurant ($18 each... yikes!) Then we checked out the Alaska Lounge since my AmEx card gets us in there... It was a super cool trendy setting and peaceful, but the food options (not that we were hungry,) left something to be desired. But a good place to charge our phones.
We boarded our flight at 5:45 pm. We were in BA World Traveler Plus which = Premium Economy. It was it's own separate little cabin, which was cool. We got boarding champagne and I don't know that a whole lot else was different other than we had nice big chairs with a footrest and bigger screen... which is sweet for a tall guy like me. The six hour flight went without incident and we arrived in London at 6:30 am. A two hour layover was perfect to get to our connecting flight to Rome, which was without incident. It was 2.5 hours long and we got to Rome at noon. I had an airport transfer set up since a cab or a private driver is the same fixed cost.
We checked into the "Le Meridian Visconti Rome" at about 1:30. We got an upgraded room with my AmEx benefit of Starwood Gold Status. The room was super trendy and fairly large for a major metropoliatan area hotel (about twice the size of our NY hotel.) Also got a great travel agent discount here and picked it because it was near the Vatican.
We were exhausted and knew that we had to keep going or we would be down for the count wanting sleep so we ordered a taxi on the mytaxi app... I read about it before departure since Lyft doesn't exist here and Uber has a small and expensive presence. It worked perfect. I love technology. Our cab showed up immediately and he took us over to the Colosseum.
The Colosseum is really a sight to behold. I had seen it in travel videos and whatnot, but standing under it you really feel the size of it and the history it holds. Really quite crazy how it was built, how long it has been there and all the history throughout the ages that happened where I was standing.
I am briefly going to say that we then spent about three hours walking and hit the Roman Forum, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain and Spanish steps. You will forgive me if I wait to talk about those because I am beat and need some sleep.
We just got back from dinner at a little place near our hotel. I had delicious orecchiette pasta with broccoli and sausage, and some really good desert... I don't know what it was. I don't think Kory's lasagna was anything out of the ordinary, but he really loved his Tiramisu desert... and we both loved the bottle of 9 Euro table wine... Can't beat that price, and it was delicious.
Going to get some beauty sleep now since we have to be at the Vatican at 7 am for our early entry tour... More adventures to come.
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