Roma I
Rome, wow! Christian was right; the driving in Germany is fabulous compared to Rome. John compared it to Tijuana! I agree. The lines on the road are just a suggestion here. You’ll have 5 or 6 cars across 3 lanes. Needless to say, I was white knuckled until we arrived at our apartment. Once there, we discovered that apparently you need to pay with cash. Well, we’d already used the ATM that day so weren’t able to just go get some more out. The amount due was more than our daily limit anyway, not even if we took out our limit the entire time of our stay would we have enough. The woman who met us with the keys said to just write a check, I had brought two just in case, thanks Lord! There is no parking in Rome, well it’s hard to find, so John dropped me off to handle all of this and find a parking space. We were late getting into town so the rental place was closed already and we couldn’t return the van yet. Once I discovered I had left the check in the van, we just had to wait for John to return. It took him about 20 minutes. Delilah, our GPS system, had taken him down some NARROW streets. So narrow, that there was hardly room for the van and one person walking next to him. People were banging on the van as he drove by. John thought he was going to get stuck in some strange alley unable to get the van out unscathed! A nice shop person came out to help and took his stands back in to make more room and helped John out. He finally just parked illegally and ran the stuff over. I was immensely thankful to have not experienced the back alleys of Rome! I wrote the check and we were done. Or so we thought…
We realized quickly that we weren’t going to find a parking spot for the van so the best thing to do was try and figure out the overnight drop off for the van. We gave the kids strict instructions on staying in the apartment and drove off to the train station across town to drop off the van. At this time, we’d like to offer a special thanks to Delilah for all her love and support on this trip. She guided us swiftly to our stop. We figured out what to do and drove into the parking garage to drop off the van. The ceiling was low, the antenna was hitting but it was the flexible kind so it was no big deal. We drove floor by floor until we got to the ramp of the 7th floor, where we were dropping the van. The ceiling dropped even lower and we stopped mid-ramp. John rolled down his window and stuck his head out. He figured we had about 1cm, yes 1 CM of clearance! We slowly backed up and found the parking garage attendant to ask what we do. He led us to a handicap spot on about the 4th floor, I think he was tired of hearing the antenna hit the pipes! We closed it up and set off to walk back to the apartment. Our feet were screaming once we got back, about 11:15pm, just over 2 hours after we had set off to return the van. The kids were sound asleep with all our things neatly put away, what great kids we have!
We realized quickly that we weren’t going to find a parking spot for the van so the best thing to do was try and figure out the overnight drop off for the van. We gave the kids strict instructions on staying in the apartment and drove off to the train station across town to drop off the van. At this time, we’d like to offer a special thanks to Delilah for all her love and support on this trip. She guided us swiftly to our stop. We figured out what to do and drove into the parking garage to drop off the van. The ceiling was low, the antenna was hitting but it was the flexible kind so it was no big deal. We drove floor by floor until we got to the ramp of the 7th floor, where we were dropping the van. The ceiling dropped even lower and we stopped mid-ramp. John rolled down his window and stuck his head out. He figured we had about 1cm, yes 1 CM of clearance! We slowly backed up and found the parking garage attendant to ask what we do. He led us to a handicap spot on about the 4th floor, I think he was tired of hearing the antenna hit the pipes! We closed it up and set off to walk back to the apartment. Our feet were screaming once we got back, about 11:15pm, just over 2 hours after we had set off to return the van. The kids were sound asleep with all our things neatly put away, what great kids we have!
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