Thinking Out Loud Thursday - Rome: Day Uno

September has been a whirlwind month and it started with a trip of a lifetime to Italy.  The trip was made even more special because I got to share it with my husband, Eric, and my best friend, Linda.  The three of us rose early on Saturday morning and headed to the airport with all the excitement our bodies could hold.  That's what I'll be thinking out loud about today!

We had booked our trip through Travelocity back in February and had been anxiously awaiting September to arrive.  Little secret - I went through Ebates to get to Travelocity.  (Side note - if you haven't signed up for Ebates, what are you waiting for?!?  It's free money and SO easy to use.  Click HERE to get started.)

Our flight plan was St. Louis to Atlanta, then Atlanta to Rome on Delta.  The total travel time was scheduled for 15 hours and 20 minutes.  We landed in Rome right on time -- 8:00 am on Sunday morning.  I had arranged a driver through our hotel to pick us up and she was waiting with our name on a sign as soon as we cleared customs.  Our home for the week was Hotel Delle Nazioni.  This centrally located hotel was a fabulous place to have as a home base.  More on the hotel later.

We are big believers in the Rick Steves travel books and we carried both the Italy and Rome ones with us on vacation.  Last year we had the Paris book for our adventure there and he didn't let us down one time.  Same held true for this trip to Italy.

We arrived at the hotel and thankfully our rooms were ready.  We dumped our bags and hit the streets.  Our first destination was located steps away from our hotel -- The Trevi Fountain.  I'm not even kidding, I bet I ended up with 785748 pictures of this spectacular landmark.  It was so close to our hotel that we literally passed it at least 2 or 3 times per day.

Our walk took us to Piazza Navona.  Here we witnessed crowds gathered to enjoy life music and entertainers.  We sat down to try our first pizza of the week and a little caffeine.

With our Rome book in hand, we followed Rick's suggestion of The Heart of Rome walking tour.  We ventured past the Pantheon and headed to the Spanish Steps.   Even though we were operating on limited sleep, we climbed the 138 steps (which seemed like 8,000) to the top to take in the sweeping view of the city.

We rewarded ourselves for the hike to the top of the steps with our first (of many) gelato.  Oh my goodness - it was so good!

On our way back to the hotel, we stumbled across what ended up being one of our favorite restaurants of the week - Origano.

After logging 16,320 steps on my Fitbit, we crawled into bed at the early time of 8:30 pm.  We felt our first day was a success and we were anxious to get a good night's rest and start again the following morning.  Stay tuned for our Day 2 adventures!

What are you thinking out loud about today?  Link up and share! 

An InLinkz Link-up

Enjoy more Thoughts for Thursday at:

Home of Malones

East Coast Chic

This is How We Roll