Rome in a day!

We arrived in Bari, Italy at 8 am Saturday morning.  By the time we got through customs(2 hours!), we barely had enough time to get to the train station for our 4 hour ride to Rome.  We arrived in Roma Termini again and had to buy tickets for another train to our apartment.  We then had a few minute walk with all our luggage. We were quite the site, walking thru the streets of Rome.



We found a grocery store to buy breakfast and snacks.  We found a little pizza place that sold an equivalent to slouvaki.  Yummy!!!  We ate dinner in the apartment and went to bed.



We were up early and after a quick breakfast, caught a tram to the center of Rome.  From there we walked everywhere. We only had a day, so we decided not to take any tours or go inside any monuments.  We only stopped for a quick lunch at a restaurant, where we ordered a true Italian pizza.

We again hit the streets to see every site we could in the short amount of time we had. We were pleasantly surprised at how close everything was. Our kids kept up, they were as excited as we were to be there.

Over the years of homeschool, the kids have learned a lot about Rome and were able to recognize many of these places, as well as tell us the history of each site.

We knew that Scanderbeg, Albania's national hero, had spent some time in Rome, so we were so excited when we finally found Scanderbeg Piazza on our map.  We navigated our way, using our tiny map in order to see it in person.  The building where he stayed is still there.



We were in the city until about 7 pm and then headed back to our apartment.  We stopped only to pick up a little dinner of slouvaki once again.  We ate it quickly and repacked so we could be ready to be up and out of our apartment around 3:30 am to catch our 8 am flight out of Rome.  What a day!!!



Amazingly, it was actually cheaper to take the time travelling thru Italy, spending a day in Rome on our return trip, than it would have been for us to have flown directly into Tirana, Albania.  We feel so incredibly spoiled that our family was able to visit both of these amazing places.