Finally, Some Friends!

Laine, Charles, Allie, and Christoph; Spanish Steps

By the great law of Murphy we finally got some friends to come visit, while we’re flat broke! We were so excited to see our friends that we didn’t care, and we made the best out of what little funds we had. It helps that most travelers are also on a budget!

Lainie at the Truth Mouth. Rome has great free sites!!

Wednesday morning Charles set off to the airport to meet Lainie. They worked together at the Starlight in Ellensburg, and since she had already been planning a trip to Dublin for this year she added Rome to her list when we extended an invitation. After some small confusion at the airport (for some reason they took her flight info off the board completely and Charles wasn’t sure if her plane had just vanished into thin air-turns out it was just late. Only an hour and a half!), they arrived back at the house sweaty and tired.

Out on the town!

Knowing how jet-lag can ruin a good portion of your holiday if you succumb to it, we fed Lainie and started out to see some sites before she could fall asleep. First stop was the Colosseo, and then we wandered through the ruins of the Foro Romani, and onto Piazza Venezia. As we wandered through the halls of the great monument to Vittorio Emmanuele I got a call on my phone; it was Christoph!

Allie and Christoph goofing off at Colosseo

I met Christoph when he was an exchange student at my high school during my senior year. We were in touch over the internet and he told me that he and a friend were traveling from Berlin though Austria and then to Italy playing music and visiting the country. He thought perhaps they’d be near Rome by Thursday or Friday. Since it was only Wednesday I wasn’t expecting to hear from him, but he wanted to know if it would be ok for him to arrive early. I told him to get in his van and make the drive from Siena tonight, and we would wait up for him.

Christoph and Allie at the apartment

Then we walked to the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain, and as we were waiting for the bus to head back home, what had been a gorgeous day suddenly turned into a torrential downpour, and we were soaked by the time the bus came. We went home and had some dinner and had a few colleagues from work over to hang out. Christoph finally arrived at about 11 or 11:30, because he had got lost trying to navigate in the chaos of Rome.

So after months of dying to have some friends visit, fortune finally smiled on us and brought us two on the same day!