28. NICE and ROME

This was another stellar day, starting with our home made breakfast by chef Jean Bernard at his home…our B&B  last night. We were again flabbergasted by the spread of food he put out just for us, a full French/Continental type breakfast, PLUS fresh scrambled eggs from the chickens he keeps in his yard, and all kinds of other stuff we didn’t have room to eat. Lynn had many more conversations in French with Jean Bernard, during and after breakfast. If you ever go to St. Paul De Vence, you HAVE to stay with Jean Bernard, is all I can say! And be sure to make friends with his wonderful cocker spaniel, Vicki…the dog is a dear.

Another  beauty of our B&B was it’s closeness to the NICE airport. As our son-in-law Art would say, it’s in the NICE part of France. It took us only 1/2 hour to get to the airport, in morning rush hour traffic, and to find our rental car return garage. You can’t believe how free the feeling is when you finally get rid of the car!!! No more worrying about damage, parking, theft, or all the other concerns you have traveling with someone else’s car. We walked our bags in to the airport, checked the big bag and my bicycle case through to Miami, then settled down at our gate for the plane to Rome. More fun people-watching and reading, then we finally flew on Air Atalia to ROME. High point for us on this flight: Lynn's seat partner was a retired French lady heading for vacation, who spoke no English, so they jabbered away in French a long time. Lynn’s last opportunity to practice her second language on this trip, and it was fun.

Why go to Rome? Well, to get a direct connection flight to Miami the next day...21 hours later! We arrived in ROME in early afternoon, and checked into our room at the airport hotel just in time to catch the shuttle to downtown ancient Rome. We ran for it! Grabbed a map from the concierge and made it just in time. The bus was so relaxing, as the driver had to wrestle with horrid traffic and tight streets while we just watched the sights go by. We wanted to see the Spanish Steps, because we never saw them on previous trips to Rome with students. The bus driver just pointed straight ahead when he let us all out near the Coliseum … we were about 300 feet from the Steps! We took some pics of both sets pf steps we saw there. One of them is sure to be the ones Bob Dylan sang about in “When I Paint My Masterpiece”, or Guy Clark in “Dublin Blues”!  UPDATE: NOW, back in the room, Lynn points out that we have been BAMBOOZLED…the steps we saw weren't the Spanish Steps at all. Anybody can see on the internet that the Spanish Steps are much cooler than the ones we photographed. Oh well, refer to my next sentence regarding this goof-up!

FAKE Spanish Steps! Next trip to Rome we WILL see the real thing..."When I paint my masterpiece...

This was the fastest, lamest and most un-recommended tour of Rome ever conducted…if you go there, do NOT limit yourself to two hours and a fast lunch at a cafe like we did! In our defense, we have been here before, and were just killing the afternoon before flying home tomorrow a.m. BUT it sure felt funny to be almost running past these famous ancient sites, without exploring and thinking about them. Also, we found the Coliseum and the huge construction in front of the ancient ruins of the Forum were all covered with scaffolding, for renovation or reconstruction. So, it was hard to see some of the stuff we hoped to explore. And we were tired, too…so we headed down to catch the 5 p.m. shuttle back to the hotel. You should’ve seen Lynn hot-footing it through the crowds of tourists, to be sure we made it to the shuttle bus pickup site on time. If we missed it, we would’ve had to wait another 2 hours for the next shuttle. Two more hours of Rome crowds might have killed both of us. We got spoiled by our time in small, uncrowded places the past weeks.

We’re in our room, getting ready for the last flight of our trip. Flying home tomorrow is as big a drag as there can be - 8 hours or so from here to Miami, then drive home to Jupiter. Nothing exciting to report on there, so no post tomorrow. I’ll probably just write a final wrap-up later. Thanks so much for all your interest, and all the good wishes we’ve received during our time away. We sure are blessed with wonderful friends, family and experiences. Now, YOU go do something and write about it so WE can read it, OK? 

LINK TO all the photos we took so far, if you'd like to see more:

https://picasaweb.google.com/104261232464745572476/ProvencePhotos?authuser=0&feat=directlink