OUR NEW HOME IN ROME

Packing and Leaving for Our New Home in Rome

We had imagined this day for more than a year, the exciting moment when we leave our family, friends and comfortable home to head out on a Adventure of a Lifetime traveling around the world. We were finally moving to our new home in Rome. It is a brisk sunny day in Northern California. A moving truck filled with our recently thinned-down household possessions just pulled away from our home. It is headed to a nearby storage unit where our stuff will reside while we travel the world.

We hand two sets of house keys and garage openers to the property manager who will pass them on to the renters who will sign a lease and move in soon. We lift our over-packed rolling duffel bags into the Jeep that Barbara’s brother Larry is lending us. Then we ride off into the sunset towards our new home in Rome.

Except…

It didn’t happen the way we imagined it would.  First, sunset is still five hours away, second, we have a bunch of final errands to take care of in the next four days before we leave, and third, there’s a small complication — we don’t have passports in our possession. Our passports sit on an anonymous State Department desk 2,500 miles away  in Washington, DC! When it comes to international travel, not having a passport is a definite show-stopper. The stress level is through the roof.

Murphy’s Law Strikes Once

How in the world could this happen after all the travel research, planning and painstaking crossing of T’s and dotting of I’s?  We believed we double-checked every possible requirement to determine visa requirements for 35 countries.  We were surprised to learn just two weeks before our departure, there were several visas we still needed!

To obtain a visa you fill out an application and mail it with your passport and fees to a foreign embassy in the US. This can take several weeks. There simply wasn’t enough time to apply for the visas and have them returned with our passports before our flight to our new home in Rome. After some research, it seemed the best solution was for us to apply for duplicate passports on a rush basis.  That way we could send one set away to obtain visas and carry the other set for our immediate travel.

Murphy’s Law Strikes Twice

In theory there was plenty of time to accomplish this and it should have worked fine.  In real life, we made every rookie mistake imaginable!  First we forgot a signature on the application — so we shipped new signature pages.  On our second attempt, our applications are rejected because the passport photos are five days older than permitted.  We shipped new photos overnight.   Each mistake we made burned through a few of our valuable days. We decide to fly to Philadelphia as originally planned and keep our fingers crossed the documents will be issued in time for us to fly to Rome. At least we are in the air going somewhere finally after a year of planning our Adventure of a Lifetime. We are above the clouds.

Finally, we are informed our applications are approved and the passports issued. They will be express shipped to our hotel in Philadelphia for early delivery on the day of our Rome flight. We wake early probably due to excitement and nervous energy. We are greeted by a breathtaking sunrise over Philadelphia. This is our LAST sunrise we will see in the United States for a year.

We were home free, we thought. However, overnight a winter weather system caused delays in FEDEX shipments. We checked at 10:45 a.m., 12:30 p.m. and 2:00 p.m. while we sat in the hotel lounge biting our nails. We peered anxiously through plate glass windows looking for the ubiquitous purple and orange logo of a FEDEX delivery truck. Finally, we saw the truck, ran outside and retrieved our package. We hailed a cab and headed for the airport – let the adventure begin!

Unforced Errors – Strike Three

Fast forward through the blur of an eight hour transatlantic flight. It’s 10 a.m. on a gray drizzly Thursday.

We are standing outside the door of a very old building clinging to the edge of a narrow cobblestone street attempting to stay out of the path of tiny aggressive cars, roaring scooters, and groups of talkative pedestrians who pass in a continuous stream inches from our noses.  We’ve both been awake for more than 24 hours fueled on anxiety and excitement. Dreaming of our new home in Rome did not include standing on the side of a road in a chilly drizzle.

Can Travel go too Smoothly?

You see, our flight to Rome was scheduled to arrive at 9:30 a.m. and we arranged for an early check in with our Airbnb host at 11:30 believing that was the earliest we could possibly arrive. Our plans went awry because a beneficial tail wind got us to Rome 20 minutes early, deplaning went quickly and getting our bags and clearing customs was a breeze. Normally, we’d say yay!, its great to have things go so effortlessly, but now we are at the Airbnb nearly 90 minutes earlier than our host expected, or agreed to.

We send a message to our host asking to be let in.  He responds in incredulous disbelief “but you said you would arrive at 11:30!” We are sure he is making animated hand gestures as he types. Understanding our predicament, he said he would contact his cousin who would come let us in. We never thought to ask when we could expect her to arrive so we stood there looking hopefully at each car that drove past.

Finally, Our New Home in Rome!

Just when we thought we might drop from tiredness, a small silver car pulls up, a beautiful young Italian woman steps out and introduces herself in English as our host’s cousin, Sara, and apologizes profusely for her delayed arrival.  She is here to greet us, show us around the apartment, and leave keys.  Ah, life is good again!

We follow Sara through a decorative iron gate that leads onto a tiny terracotta patio, enclosed with shrubs and furnished with a table and chairs and enter the apartment through tall French doors. Our first glimpse of our new home in Rome is a small but light-filled modern living room featuring a comfortable looking sofa, flat screen TV, small dining table and desk. We also get the cooks tour of the kitchen, bedroom and not one, but two full bathrooms.  The place is perfect, and we love it. Sara hands us a welcome gift of wine and cookies and takes her leave.

Taking a Look Around

Our new home in Rome has a tiny but efficient kitchen and enough basic cooking and eating utensils to allow us to make and eat simple meals at home.   It also has tons of storage and a washing machine (but no dryer).

Three other things not present that we’ll need to learn to work without are a microwave oven, dishwasher, and a garbage disposal. Hopefully, it will be fun to come up with creative and resourceful solutions.  We feel up to the challenge.

Our First Outing

The long travel day made us tired and hungry. Finding food wins out so we google the closest grocery store and find something called a ‘super mercato’ within walking distance.  Turns out a super mercato is much smaller than an American grocery store…think more in terms of a good-size gas station mini-mart. We ooh and ahh over prepared meals in a refrigerated case, check out a small but gorgeous selection of oversized fruits and vegetables, and ponder an enormous selection of every shape of pasta, tomato products, olive oils and balsamic vinegars.  There is a small meat counter and fresh bakery.  What we don’t see a lot of are Coke and Pepsi, snack foods, and processed foods or mixes.

The breakfast cereal selection is a fraction of what we see at home but there is no oatmeal.  We ask an employee if they have it, he shakes his head no. Since we routinely have oatmeal for breakfast every day, we use Google Translate for the Italian word which is: “fiocchi d’ avena” literally meaning “flakes of oats.” We ask again, this time for ‘avena’, and sure enough, he pulls a plastic bag of oatmeal off the shelf and hands it to us with a smile. We pick up a few more items to complete the fixings for easy dinner of salad, pasta, bread and wine.

It’s All Been Worth the Effort!

Heading back toward the apartment by a different route, we turn a corner and we stop in our tracks with our eyes huge and jaws dropped and let out an ahhhh! We’ve just seen our first glimpse of a super close, super huge Colosseum!

We knew we were very close to the landmark, but we didn’t realize how close until now.  It is beyond belief we will see this beautiful stadium every day we are in our new home in Rome.

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