28 July 2010

Two Nice Developments

TWO THINGS HAVE happened this week that we are finding quite enjoyable: 1) Kerri's parents arrived for a visit, and 2) the temperatures have dropped to an almost perfect level.

We didn't tell the kids when their grandparents were coming, but I woke up very early on Monday and drove to Rome to pick them up. Normally, this would be about a 2 hour trip -- and in fact the trip to Rome took about 2 hours. The trip home, however, took nearly 3 1/2, mainly because I missed one very critical turn and before we knew it we were driving around Rome. At one point Kerri's mom said she thought she saw a sign for the coliseum. I was certain that we we're that lost -- there was no way we were so far off track that we were in the center of Rome. About 30 seconds later were were driving along side of, you guessed it, the Coliseum.

Rome is an incredibly difficult city to drive in -- lots of one way streets, no real navigable grid of any kind, and very few signs. It literally took us a full hour to get out of the city and back on to the A1 heading North. As much as it was my fault, I tried my best to blame my in-laws for the missed exit (why were they talking to me so much when I was driving?)

But perhaps the best development of the week is the weather. For the past 2-3 days the high temperature hasn't reached 30 and it looks like this pattern is going to stay for at least a week to ten days. This is a nice change from the first week we were here, when the highs were consistently in the upper 30s, nearing 40! In a house with no air conditioning, that's getting a little hot.

Now it's time to explore the region a bit with Les and Joni. I'm sure we'll have updates.

1 comment :

The Telfers at Warragal Park said...

Do you have a GPS? Our TomTom helped us a lot when we were in France. It took us not the way we would have gone if we were following the signs, and some incredibly narrow streets were fascinating places we wouldn't have gone without it.