It has been said that Rome wasn’t built in a day. That may be true, but they certainly didn’t put the time or effort into making the glorious city an easy walk.
Josh and I arrived at Fiumicino Airport around 9:40 am (3:40am EST) and had about a 9 hour flight. Boarding our flights in Pittsburgh and Detroit were easy, and we got off the place without a hitch. The customs agent didn’t even look at my passport and let me walk right through. However, I would soon realize that same apathy resonated within the rest of the airport.
Now, I admit, maybe I am being a little bit Western here, but I was expecting Rome International Airport to be a bit nicer. It reminded me of JFK on a lesser scale. It was kind of dirty, wasn’t kept up well, and doing anything there seemed to be…complicated. If there’s one word to describe these last 12 hours in Rome it would be complicated. Josh wanted to get currency, but I wanted to push through and get our train tickets, thinking there would be more places to exchange money; I was wrong. The one place that did do an exchange was closed and we were left walking around Fiumicino Airport for about an hour trying to figure out what to do.
Through this whole process, however, Josh and I remained calm. Of course we had our moments when we were upset with the airport; we were tired, exhausted, jet lagged, and just wanted to get to our hotel. But we stayed calm, found a bus shuttle back to our hotel, and then more complicated.
Our hotel doesn’t have a big glamorous sign out front. Nor is there a sign on “our door.” Our shuttle driver was less than accommodating, dropping us off on the side of street saying, “Goodbye,” we looked up at the buildings with no sense of direction and just began walking. We found ourselves in what seemed to be China Town of Rome. Each little shop had Asians either doing nails or selling obscure items. As we made our way up one street, we came to La Casa Di Amy (Our hotel is La Casa Di Rosy, yes I know, but it was all we could find online at the time). The attendant kindly pointed out this was not our hotel and explained where to go. Even after her explanation, Josh and I walked around for about 10 minutes, and finally saw on the little doorbell, our hotel.
Realizing our luggage couldn’t fit into the tiny elevator, we made our way up, with our luggage, 3 flights of stairs to find that we had finally arrived at our new home for 4 days. Our hotel attendant was quite nice and helped us out a lot. After we got cleaned up, Josh and I went out for lunch, of course, after we exchanged our money for the ridiculous currency of European living.
Here’s the boring part you can skip. We went back and took a nap afterwards. Okay, done.
When we woke up, Josh and I went out looking for the place Mrs. Klug told us about, but weren’t able to find it. We are anticipating a grand journey tomorrow to find it. We did, however, get to see the Piazzo del Quirinale and the Fontana di Trevi, which were incredible! We finally felt like we were in Rome at this point. We ate at this little restaurant by the Trevi Fountain and had a good night. Of course, we got extremely confused trying to make our way back to our hotel, but we stayed calm and made it back.
Spiritual Implications: I am very proud of myself and my brother for staying calm through this whole process. It could have been so easy to fly off the handle and get hotheaded, especially for how tired we were, but we just stayed calm, and I am positive that the Lord was behind that. He has kept us safe, and shown us a lot about the importance of patience during these last 12 hours. I know David was talking about his enemies and those who plan evil against men, but I think of our enemy, the Devil, in Psalm 37:7.
“Be still before the LORD and wait patiently for him; do not fret when men succeed in their ways, when they carry out their wicked schemes.”
Tomorrow we get to tour the Colosseum and couldn’t be more excited!
Created on June 12, 2012
