Rome On A Thousand Calories A Day.

U.S. Air came through again. It seems the previous night's flight to Rome was cancelled so they had about 800 people waiting at the gate to get on the Airbus 300 wide body. It was like the evacuation of Libya. Seven hours with knees in chest and 18 inches across the arm rests. Maybe this was a skinny Euro-Model, because the seat belt only had about three inches to spare and I usually have a lot more than that left over. We had an eight month old baby in front of us, but she was an angel. I wish we had a few more babies around us instead of the guy behind us who kept talking to his family over the seat next to us and the other guy on my right who sounded like he had consumption.

After nine hours of this high altitude hell, we landed in sunny Roma. The Rome airport is about the size of the Charlotte Airport we left out of but had the ambience of the Port Authority Bus Terminal on 8th Ave and 42nd Street in Manhattan. There was no Customs Inspection and the agent stamped my passport and sailed it back at me and I was in Italy. Ben picked us up in his Mini One and then it was off to the Formula One races which means we were on the highway. There were motorcycles going 40 km/hr in the right lane, puny cars going 80 km/hr and nice cars going 130 km/hr in the left lane. While all the time the horns are blowing and everyone weaves through traffic like salmon swimming upstream. All the while the Tom-Tom is calling out directions in Italian.

Tomorrow, we are off to the Vatican to see the Holy Father. My Italian is pretty rough. I sound like a mixture of the "Kings Speech" and Farsi. I hate not being able to communicate; I'm really a "people person." I'm enjoying all the different cars I'm seeing fly by me. There is a million motorcycles and scooters whizzing about .

The other observation I've made is that obese people are as rare as parking spaces.