11:06 PM >> EURO2007 >> Sunday, April 1

Day 1, or "We're Heeeeeere... "
Paris, FR; Rome, IT

Finally, around noon or so we arrived into Paris. Just one more flight until we make it to Rome! I swear we've been travelling for 492 hours straight already. Fortunately, once again we got to kill time between flights in the First Class lounge. This one even had a shower and I think a sauna, but we didn't use either. I drank a beer of course and then fell asleep, and I mean all-the-way-asleep, not just some uncomfortable-because-you're-sleeping-in-a-chair half-sleep. Good thing M was awake when we had to go catch the flight, because I never would have woken up. Yes this really helped me to have jet lag. Hurrah.

After getting our luggage in Rome, we got a taxi that was a Mercedes to drive us to our hotel. The dude that drove looked normal but was crazy. As in he drove really crazy, but really, no crazier than any other taxi. There was a slight scare when M looked at the speedometer as we were zooming down an ordinary, four-lane road in the city and saw it pointing at 120. Her eyes got as big as saucer plates until I reminded her that the speedometer was in kilometers per hour. But that still is pretty fast. 74.4 MPH. (1 km = .62 miles)

The picture above was the view out of our hotel once we finally got there. I don't know why, but for some reason all of the remote controls in Europe work completely different than in the U.S. Why is that, since we're all buying our electronics from Japan and Korea and Asia, anyway? I had to get the nice old lady at the front desk (the hotel only had seven rooms) to explain to me how to work the TV and satellite receiver in conjunction, and the next day she had to explain to me how to work the remote for the air conditioner (which I could've figured out had I known about the secret panel that she opened on it). Remembering all of her help just makes me feel that much worse that we ass-identally stole the bottle opener from the room. (Not yet, that happened on Day 2.)

So all we really did was unpack and then go to a late dinner. The food was good although we didn't know how to order. The Italian menus were always divided into Starters, Salads, First Course, and Second Course. First Course was always pasta, and Second Course was always meat. But we didn't know whether to order both courses or not, so we both just got a pasta, but that was nowhere near enough food, so then we split one of those sliced tomato + mozzarella cheese dishes, and then we still had to get chocolate cake for dessert. And then on the way home I still bought some Paprika Pringles, but that was more just to be on the safe side.