Roma:

With such a small amount of time in Rome, it’s hard to get a good feeling of the city, but we had a full day of exploring and sightseeing.  We met our guide outside our apartment and took a brief taxi ride to the beginning of our tour.  We saw the Arch of Constantine, Coliseum, Roman Forum and the Pantheon before our guide left us to explore on our own.  We then toured the Spanish Steps, countless fountains and city sights well into the early evening; a pretty typical James’ rigor to see everything we could.

Well this is where we get some excitement!  I didn’t tell you the night we arrived, we all stopped and pulled money out of the nearest bank machine – well my card only worked once and then deactivated until I contact the bank to allow access again; so, in the mean time Mom and Dad G. were our lifeline to have some cash available.  We were far from our apartment from our day of exploring so we decided to save a hundred Euro in taxi fees and take the Metro.  Unfortunately Mom and Dad became targets and victims of pick pocketers and they took all the money and credit cards Mom and Dad had.  Fortunately they left the passports or our vacation would really have been ruined (we were leaving the next day to Florence and then to Venice and didn’t have time to get new ones)….don’t worry, we were able to contact home to get everything deactivated and Mom had left her debit card at the apartment.  That event certainly left us in an interesting predicament though.