When In Rome

So we're here.

22 hours of travel. 3 glasses of wine. 1 horrific hour at Heathrow, during which I was stripped of my pride, dignity, and every container of babyfood I'd imported from America.

But I digress.

This place, Rome, it's not so bad, but it is essentially crazy. Last night we strapped on a beach bag and a hiking backpack and walked 4 miles in light rain to and fro the grocery store and the cell phone shop. We ended up with a rather motley assembly of groceries and no cell phones, but the fact remains: we tried.

And. AND...we found tortilla chips and something called beans in chilly, which look sort of like pinto beans and taste not very like them at all...but which will most definitely do the job.

A brief summary of Italy thus far. It is: inconvenient, messy, loud, languid, glamorous, indulgent, sensual, historic, frenetic, and peaceful, all at once. The boys are nuts, we're sleep deprived, (in fact, Joey is yelling at me from his packnplay even now, at 10 pm) but we're still really happy to be here.

We had a picnic lunch today at the base of Castello San Angelo and ate brie, bread, apples, dark chocolate and Coke like it was a delicacy. And it tasted like it was. Joey chased pigeons, rode the filthy carousel, and generally played the part of 'city kid' to a T.

I think we'll do just fine here.

But damn, my feet hurt.