Oregon Arts Orchestra - Italy Trip day 1 and 2 - Travel and Arrival inRome

We decided that we would drive the kids to Utah to be with their grandparents instead of asking the grandparents  to all come up to Oregon.  Because of that, Kip and I didn't fly with the rest of the orchestra.  We took off from Salt Lake and went through DC, with a quick visit in the airport from Wendy and Willem and their little guy.  Our flight from DC to Rome was scheduled to arrive 30 minutes after the main part of the orchestra, but it was delayed, putting us almost 3 hours behind them.  I hoped they would save us some room on the back of the tour bus for when we caught up.

When we got to the Rome Airport, we ended up choosing a shuttle to deliver us to the Piazza Navona where the main part of the orchestra was then eating lunch.  Once the driver had filled all the seats, he headed off into the city.  He was a crazy Italian driver, texting and talking on his cell phone while driving haphazardly through crowded narrow streets.  We had to periodically inform him that the light he was stopped at had changed to green.  He dropped the other two sets of passengers off first and finally pulled up to the Piazza Navona to drop us.  We hauled our luggage out of the back of his van and headed into the plaza, scanning the crowds of tourists for a familiar face.  We re relieved when we found them at a restaurant at the opposite side from where we had entered.  We pulled a table up and ordered our first meal in Italy.  It involved pizza.

After lunch we found the bus and went to the hotel, NH Leonardo di Vinci. We stashed our things in our rooms and went down to a conference room for rehearsal.  It wasn't a very pleasant rehearsal.  In spite of our efforts to sleep on the flights over, I don't think any of us were feeling rested.  We were exhausted and it showed clearly in our playing.  Cindy admitted defeat, sending us to dinner in the hotel with instructions to go to bed afterwards instead of coming back for another rehearsal.