Well, it's finally arrived. We head off to the airport tomorrow afternoon. Tom & I booked this 35-day trip through 18 countries back in September of 2013, some eight months ago. We've planned, booked excursions, booked apartments in Rome, Amsterdam and Paris, exchanged money into Euro's and USD, planned and planned wondering whether April 26th would ever arrive.

Our flight tomorrow will be close to ten (10) hours into Amsterdam with a four (4) hour layover and then another three (3) hours into Rome. Watching CNN this afternoon they have said that they're expecting 1,000,000 Catholics into St. Peter's on Sunday for the canonization of two popes, John XXIII and John Paul II - that should be fun. While we're scheduled to tour the Catacombs under St. Peters and finish up at the Basilica on Monday, I'm kind of hoping that most of those 1M people have scheduled a Monday flight out-of-town.

We feel pretty confident through the email correspondence that we've had with our apartment owner in Rome, that we'll will actually have a two-bedroom suite available to us when we arrive at their door - considering that they've taken our money. What I don't want to hear after twenty (20) hours of travel time is "what apartment" - keep your fingers crossed.

According to the advance weather reports it seems that we'll be hiking around the seven hills of Rome in the rain, but we'll just make the best of it. We're scheduled to board the HAL's Eurodam on Tuesday a.m. from the port of Civitavecchia (Chiv-it-ta-vekkia) which is about a one hour drive away from the centre of the city. So, we'll have Sunday night and all day Monday to get reacquainted with this amazing city.

We've had a little drama leading up to tomorrow's departure - Deb has torn a muscle in her right shoulder last week so she's been on some muscle relaxers, pain pills and a heating pad for most of this week in an effort to get better before our flight tomorrow - I'm sure that I'll be able to handle the four bags myself but I'm hoping she's going to feel better soon!