On Sunday morning, we woke up relatively early to eat
breakfast and finish packing before having a small Bible study with just the
family at home. We weren’t going to have time to go to the church service at my
family’s church in Stafford and make our flight to Rome so my dad read us some
of Romans and we discussed how Rome was basically the center of the world in
the era of Paul and Peter and was in great need of hearing the gospel. Putting
this in perspective before coming to Rome was very neat for all of us. I’m
definitely looking forward to seeing the places where Paul and Peter preached,
or at least prayed for, in hopes that people would receive Christ and hear the
gospel.
We ate lunch at home around 11 and were picked up by a shuttle
at 11:30 that took us to the airport in Birmingham. UK, not US. I know,
confusing, right? :) We were already at the airport a little early but the flight ended up being
delayed an hour so we went to Frankie & Benny’s* in the airport, which is a
little sit-down restaurant that is sort of similar to O’Charley’s, but a little
nicer in my opinion. They have very good burgers and calzones. Trey and I
actually didn’t eat lunch at the house because we’d eaten a late breakfast, so
we had lunch at Frankie & Benny’s and my parents & grandparents had
dessert.
*There is a Frankie & Benny’s in Stafford and we went
out to eat there the first night Justin and I came for spring break. While we
were there, Justin asked the waiter where the “Loo” was and the guy was very impressed
with his use of the term :)
Our flight to Rome left around 3 or 4 in the afternoon and
lasted about two and a half hours. We were picked up by one of the guys that
works at the hotel we’re staying at, which is about 45 minutes from the
airport, and we discovered very
quickly that traffic laws apparently do not apply here. The guy rolled through
the first three stop signs we came to and I saw several others do the same
thing, and people will straddle two lanes when passing so they can see which
one will have less traffic. Cars everywhere. Insanity. Fearing for my life. I
kid you not…
On a happier note, the hotel we’re staying at is right
across the street from the Vatican Museum. We have a really nice view of it
from the balcony in our room :) The people who work at the hotel are very helpful with advice on where to eat
and how to get places, which has been really nice because even though most
people speak English, it’s very hard for us to understand them and vice versa.
Once we got to the hotel, the lady that was at the front desk recommended a
pizza place for us to get dinner at and by this time it was around 8 or 9 so we
were desperate for any food. The bread they brought out to us before we got our
food was incredible. I’m pretty sure it was just the pizza dough cooked into
little chunks. It was absolutely delicious. We had a little less luck with the
pizza itself…they served individual pizzas and most of us ordered some form of
pepperoni pizza, and pepperoni is actually considered peppers here. So, most of
us got pizza with spicy peppers and were not expecting it. I was able to pick
off mine pretty well and enjoy a nice cheese pizza, but they brought the pizzas
straight out of the oven, meaning we had to cut it ourselves, which was pretty
hard to do because they were so thin. In my opinion, it was very good, it just
took some work to eat it. After dinner, we basically came back to the hotel and
went straight to bed.
We have wifi in the hotel we’re staying in, but it’s been
sort of spotty so I’ll try to keep my blog as updated as possible but I may
have to wait until getting back to Stafford to finish some of my updates.
Grace and Peace.
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