Well, I guess life just has to keep on moving. I have grieved for the past 10 months and have reached a place that I don’t cry all day and have even started feeling some peace. I booked myself a Mediterranean cruise months ago and just got back this week. I travelled solo; it is just something that I felt I needed to do. Now that I am back, thought I would keep Galavanting Geezers going. I am not going to sugar coat anything here….all my feelings will be my honest emotions, some good and some bad.

This is not the first trip I have taken since Buzz passed. I went to Cabo San Lucas in January with my sisters and their husbands. My son, Kyle, also came and I am so glad he did. They all helped me get through the week and I actually enjoy myself a little. Thank you Jackie and Paul, Lynnette and Rick, and Kyle. I also travelled to Belize to meet a couple of friends. We stayed on Tobacco Cay and had a wonderful week of sleeping, lazing, reading, eating great food, and snorkeling. This trip was a big step toward healing my heart. Thank you Denise and John for welcoming me and being such good friends.

So, now onward to the current trip. I left home on Sunday October 5 and stayed close to the Denver airport to catch my 8am flight to Rome. About 6pm that night I got an email from Trip.com saying that the hotel I had booked in Rome was overbooked and they were moving me to a different hotel. No worries, as long as it was clean, the same price, and not hours from Rome, I was ok. Well, I ended up calling Trip.com 4 or more times that evening and each time they said they were working on it and someone would call me back in one hour. Never happened. So I get on my flight to Rome having no idea where I would be staying when I got there. On my layover at Dulles (what a crappy airport) I just picked up the phone and called the new hotel in Italy. Within 1 minute, I had my answer that yes, they could accommodate me. And it was actually closer to attractions then the first hotel.

Got to Rome with no problems, hopped in a taxi, and headed to the hotel. Of course, it was only 9am so my room was not ready yet. So I left my luggage there and headed out. I stopped and had a cappuccino and an avocado toast with feta cheese at a little sidewalk cafe.

I then had a golf cart tour scheduled. They actually cancelled my tour hours before because they do not take reservations for one! (what??!!) But they were happy to take the reservation when I paid for it months ago!! But they offered me a private tour for cheaper than the group tour if I paid cash to the driver. So I headed out on the 20 minute walk to our meeting place which took me an hour! There are no square blocks in Rome and half of the intersections are not marked. The ones that are marked have a stone on the side of the building with the name of the street on it. I am usually pretty good at finding my way around but Rome stumped me!!!

Well, the driver was a sweet 30 something wife/mother and we had a great time. She showed me all the major sites. It was mid-day by this point and I could not even get close to the Trevi Fountain. But saw the coliseum, Circus Maximus, the Pantheon, etc. I thought the golf carts would be taking walking paths or something but no, you are on the street with all the cars and buses, etc! It was a great way to just kind of get the feel for how Rome is laid out….I learned that there was no plan….want a street, well, put one there!!! No worries!!! I had my first Italian gelato: Salted Caramel and it was amazing!!!

My hotel, Hotel Genio, was cute and clean. My room was nothing fancy (sorry forgot to take a pic before I trashed the room!) The windows were very cool: completely closed for no air and no light, partially open for light, more open for a bit of air and all the way open for light, air, and view. They had a European breakfast buffet every morning but I found out on my last European visit, I don’t really care for the European breakfast. I am great with different foods for lunch and dinner but I need a more traditional American breakfast which is hard to come by here. So, croissants, yogurt, (the eggs looked disgusting!) and coffee that will put hair on your teeth every morning!!

I had bought a Trapizzino (a Roman street food combining a pizza blanca base with sandwich fillings. It’s a triangular pocket of soft, leavened pizza dough with a crunchy exterior and soft interior, slit open to hold a variety of traditional Roman or international fillings.) I figured I would eat it in my hotel room for dinner. Well, I was so tired I couldn’t eat. I hardly slept at the hotel on Sunday (worried about the whole hotel thing) and did not sleep on the plane so I was working on about 4 hours sleep from Sunday until Tuesday night! Asleep by 8pm and when I woke up to go the bathroom I would have a few bites of the sandwich and go back to sleep. Slept until 6am and felt so much better.