Our third day in Rome and we're sick.  It hit last night for me, and Chris this morning: an intensely sore throat, stuffy nose, and less energy than usual.  Maybe we overdid it even more than we thought, walking for 10 hours the day before yesterday (yesterday it was only 6 hours, as I was too tired to continue and had to call it a day in the early evening).
We mean to still give it a go today, and visit some Sunday street markets. There's just too much to see in Rome to let a whole day go by resting.  Hopefully the Italian pharmacies, which actually have doctors on staff and (or so I've heard) cold medicine that actually works, will save us.
The past few days have been a mix of incredible stress and amazing Roman sights.  Yesterday we went to San Giovanni in Laterano, an absolutely beautiful cathedral, the original home base of Catholic Popes, filled with light and 1600's paintings and lots and lots of gold.  Then we got lost in the chic shopping districts, watching the Romans and their mix of incredible class and horrible tackiness (sadly, even in Rome, women are under the mistaken impression that leggings are pants).  We saw mass with a full choir in Santa Maria Maggiore, which is like a long tunnel full of guilding.  We got hassled but very pushy street vendors along the Tiber river.  We ate blood oranges and our B&B host, Roberta, cooked us Roman artichokes (delicious!).  It was a nice day.  Now, if only the pharmacy can help with our throats, I hope we can have another.

On a side note, if you visit Italy on a budget of any kind, I strongly recommend you get most of your food from the grocery store.  This is for two big reasons: 1., the staples here are far less expensive than in the US, at least for actual food and not stuff coming from a package.  For instance, you can buy a big hunk of very nice peccorino or a fresh cheese for about 3 euros, or just over 4 dollars-- the kind of cheese that would cost $6-8 in the States.  Also, most bread is sold by weight, generally 2-4 euros per kilogram.  A kilo is 2.2 pounds, so you can get a full pound of freshly baked, artisan bread for about a dollar.  The baker will cut off a chunk of bread for you for whatever amount you want.  Or you can buy a whole loaf or baguette-- we preferred this, as Italian bread often has no salt, but baguettes tend to be salted, which as an American is more to my taste.   2.  Even the cheap food in Italy is better than the expensive stuff in the U.S.  On our second day in Rome we bought a picnic lunch from a grocery store in central Rome.  It was: two very large ciabatta rolls (about 60 centimes for 2), a piece of blue cheese (2.50 euro), a couple apples (1 euro), and a sausage of cooked prosciutto (1 euro).  All in all, about 5 euros, or $7, for a picnic we had while sitting in park in front of a beautiful monument, plus enough left over to make a sandwich for dinner.  The best part was that, though we chose the cheapest option for each food, the quality was still extremely high.  The  prosciutto, cheese, and bread were what you could only find in a gourmet store in the U.S., but cost about the same as would processed bologna, american cheese and wonderbread.  So, if you travel here, grocery stores are your friend.  Of course, dining in a good restaurant or cafe is fun, but it can be very expensive, and unless you get yourself way out of the tourist areas you'll often find the food quality pretty low.  If you do need to buy your food at a cafe, eat only at the bar, where the cost is about 30-50% of that sitting at a table.    You pay a lot for service in Italy, as the gratuity is already included and they charge more for sitting.
Also, gelato at a grocery store-- we found a very nice hazelnut gelato, 1/2 a liter, for 2 euros-- or the same price as one tiny cup from a gelateria.  Hooray for supermarkets!

Cadiz, Spain

After ten days at sea we arrived in Lisbon, Portugal for my birthday.  Lisbon is a crazy maze.  It's a city beautiful in its decay, with tiny streets opening to reveal crumbling marble facades, peeling paint and broken tile fronts.  The city is all hills and the sidewalks twist and tilt, which did not help our balance, newly off the sea.  Still, it was a lovely birthday.  We walked for seven hours, mostly through the old town.  We ate pastries and drank espresso (the flaky, custard-filled pasteis de nata and the tiny, intense and sweet shots of espresso).  In the evening we came back to the ship and had our usual four course dinner in the dining room, with extra desserts.  The waiters sang me happy birthday and gave me a huge piece of chocolate cake.  Afterwards we sat in the hot tub on the deck with a perfect view of the city, the dome of the cathedral and the rising layers of red roofs.
Today we are in Cadiz (Seville), Spain.  Cadiz is in every way a contrast to Lisbon.  Where Lisbon is rough, dirty, filled with cars cramped in the tiny streets, Cadiz is elegant, clean, easy to navigate and almost entirely pedestrian.  The tourist routes, color-coded, are even painted on the sidewalks!  Cadiz is like a rest after the confusion of Lisbon.  And our first chance to get on the internet after nearly two weeks.  Tomorrow we're in Malaga, the day after Cartagena.  Then we reach port and begin our bike trek-- not in Rome as we had originally planned, but on the island of Sardinia, then down to Sicily.  After all this time at sea, I'm worried our sea legs will make us fall over the moment we get on our bikes...

Victory and Procrastination

Sorry about the long, long break between posts. After two weeks of driving across the United States we finally reached Tampa, Florida-- and the same moment we took the exit to Chris' mom's house, my mom called to say my grandfather had had an accident and was in the hospital.  He passed away several days later, the day before Christmas.
Chris and I bought plane tickets and flew back to Seattle for the funeral.  It was five crazy days... Happy to be back in that beautiful city and see our friends, yet emotionally very drained.  
Now we're back in Florida, refocused, and here comes the victory part: we have our tickets to Europe, and we'll be going by ship.
We first looked into cruising to Europe instead of flying on my grandparents' suggestion, actually.  I found one transatlantic cruise sailing in February, run by Carnival.  It went from Florida to Rome, and to my total shock, was less expensive  than travel the same distance by flying economy!  Unfortunately, Carnival had no interest whatsoever in making it possible for us to bring our bikes with us.  They have a no bike policy, not even if you take them apart, stick them in a box, and hide them in your cabin.  Nor do they have any office or place where we could ship our bikes to in Rome... and we didn't really want to ship our bikes to a post office and have them wait there for us, even if it would be allowed. It would just make me really nervous.  So, based on the impression given to us by Carnival that all cruise ship companies had a similar policy, we gave up on cruising and resigned ourselves to one long miserable day of flying.  But kept stalling on buying our plane tickets...
Then, just after we came back from Seattle, I thought I'd do another check on cruises.  I had only been looking at February before, but now we needed more time to get ready.  Lo and behold: a cruise on Holland America Line, leaving in the end of March, to Rome.  I called, fully expecting to get the same answer on bikes. But they were totally cool with it.  As long as the bikes are in your cabin, no problem.   We even got a letter from the cruise director to make sure.  So we're cruising to Europe in the end of March! Now we just have to get our bodies as ready as we can for five hours a day on our bike seats.  And spend more time in the ship's gym than the buffet.
Sigh.  Buffets are a cruel mistress.