Buon Anno!

Happy New Year!

For the next few days, this blog is turning into a travel blog. I am taking all of you with us to Roma. And we are going to time travel, too, all the way back to Tuesday.

We arrived in Rome half an hour early. I didn’t expect Steve to be there yet but he checked the flight online and was there waiting for us. We then spent almost an hour waiting with him to make sure another priest arrived safely and found his ride.

As we were walking towards the airport exit some annoying man tried to get us one of those illegal cabs so we decided the hell with a taxi and took the train. Huge mistake. We had to take two trains and lug the heavy bags for what seemed like miles up and down stairs. It took us probably an hour and a half to get to the seminary from the airport.

Once we got to the seminary, things were better especially since we were no longer lugging luggage. Steve showed us a bit of the seminary. Their hall was decorated very elaborately with multiple Christmas trees, a train set and a Sponge Bob Santa.

He showed us photos and videos of his trip to Poland. While there, he toured salt mines. There was a chapel in there, a restaurant, and many statues of things made of salt – Pope John Paul, the nativity, gnomes. Many, many gnomes.

There were also pictures and video of the family he spent Christmas with, also the 2 little Polish girls putting on a show singing Christmas carols in English and Polish with Steve playing music for their show on a pink Barbie keyboard.

We walked along the Tiber River and he showed us the damage from the floods when the river rose early this month from all the rain. We walked by Castel Sant’Angelo where there was a man dressed like the statue of liberty just like by Battery Park in NY. How odd is that?

Will try to get online tomorrow with New Year’s Eve Roma style.