Thank my mom for my detailed note taking abilities

my mom LOVES hearing about my trips. and when i say "hearing about" i mean a detailed, in depth itinerary including food, weather and clothing choices for each and every moment of my trip. (love ya big, mommy!) so when i go on trips, i take a little notebook and try to write down what all i do so that i can relate each moment as best i can remember for her. so mom, this entry (and the next few) are for you!

ROME: Day 1

i got in around 9ish in the morning. lp and i were a little confused and thought we'd land in different airports, but then when i got there i realized it was the same airport and tried to find him, but it was CRAZY and i finally met him at the hotel

like we planned. (lots of hugs and kisses.....) we decided to walk around for a bit since we couldn't check in to our hotel yet. since we were staying close to the spanish steps, i chose this for our first outing. to let you in on our trip taking awesomeness, i am a HUGE list maker. i don't like set plans, but i LOVE making lists of things to do and for this trip i'd broken down areas and put things to see and places to eat in each area- dork, i know. now, lp doesn't really ca

re for lists but his sense of direction is better than any GPS system i've encountered and so i just give him a map and tell him where i want to go and he is ON IT. so he got us right there.

view from the top of the steps

we had asked our concierge for a restaurant recommendation for lunch and she gave us a WONDERFUL place to eat. before we went, we stopped for a glass of wine because we were both sleepy but excited.

for lunch, i had some seriously delicious spinach and ricotta stuffed ravioli - i was about to lick the plate. so good. and they had this yummy bread. oh my goodness, i was in heaven. it was seriously great. (sidenote: the pasta in italy is so fresh and light and the sauces are not at all heavy, plus they have normal size portions so when you eat, you don't feel all gross and full like normal). after lunch, i was kind of sleepy because of the time difference so we went back to the hotel to take a little nap.

view from our room- another window!

i took a little nap (2 hours is little, right?) and then got up and got ready to go walking around that evening. (mom, i was wearing those skinny jeans with that bright pink/yellow/black sleeveless top that i bought with you- remember? and my cute fold over boots) we walked to trevi fountain and it was craziness. just tons of people and loud and blah! needless to say, not our scene, but we took some pics and walked on.

carts selling stuff on the way to trevi fountain

lp in front of the fountain

me in front of the fountain! we both threw coins in over our shoulders and made a wish. let ya know if mine comes true!

after the crazy tourist fountain, we decided to walk and just see what we saw and find some of the smaller, cute areas. we happened on this park. i thought it was cute and we decided to walk through it on our meandering around.
after checking out some little shops and some cool areas, we stopped and had a drink at a little outside cafe before we went to dinner. we took a cab to dinner and ended up that the place was closed! luckily, our cab driver took us to another place he thought was good and we thought it was pretty good (way to go, cabbie). although usually i do not do appetizers and drinks and dinner and dessert, this trip was totally different. we had an appetizer assortment and ordered a bottle of wine while we figured out what we wanted to eat. i ordered a bacon wrapped tuna steak for my entree (um, YUM!) and lp got a veal dish. after dinner, we were going to try to walk home. as we walked down the street, i saw this:
mmmm-hmmm, big old fish. the waiters inside were laughing at us taking pictures and wanted us to come in, but since we'd just eaten, we clearly couldn't do that. instead, i ran in and got the card so that we could go back later (more on that later). we kept on walking and let me tell ya, the wind was blowing and it felt like it was like 30 degrees so we completely abandoned that idea and caught the first cab we could find, went back and slept. i slept terribly, but it was a great first day in rome!!!!!!