Roma chaos...

When I arrived in Rome yesterday afternoon, I was not prepared for the journey ahead. We walked from the train station to our hotel (about 4 blocks down) and found our hotel- the Hotel Canada (don't ask). Sweating and slightly sticky (as it was 77 degrees & humid yesterday in Rome), we plopped ourselves down in the lobby and waited to be checked in. We threw our stuff in our room, grabbed a map and started to venture out into the city. And BOY WHAT AN ADVENTURE! My feet were not prepared for the rough road ahead. Although we were provided a decent map of the city, Italy lacks one of the most important items necessary for travel by foot (or travel period)- they lack street signs. Yeaaaa...not cool. It is quite common here that every so often on the side of a building on the corner there is a street name, however this does not occur on every corner AND the sign is in marble, lightly carved and sometimes hardly visible. Talk about ancient. The second problem with Italy's geographical mapping is that the streets rarely run parallel to each other. They run zig zag, diagonal or into outer space (no not literally). Oh, and the street you're on will often turn into a different street name. So you may start on one street walking straight, and two blocks down it turns into another street. ?!?! Whack.

I got us so close to the Fountain of Trevi, but had to ask a restaurant waiter, a trash man and a local shop owner if I was going the right way. Twice I was told we were walking in the wrong direction. But have no fear, after two hours of walking we found the Fountain of Trevi engulfed by what seemed like a couple thousand people and we proceeded to drag ourselves to the Spanish steps. Praising God that we actually found the two locations, we sat there for quite some time until our tummies began to grumble & we decided it was time for dinner. We slowly made our way back toward our hotel (which by some miracle took way less time) and devoured food like we had never eaten before. Shortly after we all crashed in our rooms for the evening... I am determined to find a specific kind of cookie here in Rome and I have less than 48 hours to do so... I have been gazing into each bakery looking for them... but so far no luck. Hmmm...tomorrow is a new day.