Our last blog

Well, the trip has come to an end. We spent most of today at the beach soaking up our remaining hours in Europe. We took the train to the beach and discovered that Italians don't really believe in public beaches. Most of the beaches you had to pay to get in and there were a ton of umbrellas and lounge chairs. We found a tiny bit of public beach and it was as crowded as it could be. It was difficult to even walk down to the beach because there was no space between beach towels. Everybody was squeezed in right next to each other. And it seemed like it was all locals there too. It was fun to sit and watch the people. It seemed that most of the people were there with friends rather than family. There were very few young children. In fact, I would say the majority of people were over 30. There was also the usual peddlers trying to sell all kinds of stuff. We just ignored them and they left us alone. After a few hours soaking up the sun, we got so hungry we decided to leave. Because it was crowded, I feel like we really got to see Roman culture up close.

On our way back we stopped at a middle eastern restaurant for a mid-afternoon meal. I know, middle eastern food in Rome? But everything else is closed on Sunday so we didn't have a lot of choices. And it was really delicious! The good thing about going to the beach is that we spent hardly any money today. We realized that we had better use up all our Euros because we won't need them anymore. So we took out just as much money as we would need for dinner and the airport shuttle from the ATM. We calculated how much we've spent and how much we saved, and we went over our budget exactly $35! I am so happy with that. Of course that doesn't include our flight back to Denver, but we didn't include that in our budget anyways.

We're checked into our flight and pretty much packed up. We will get up at about 3:30 tomorrow morning to get to the airport in time for our 6:10am flight. Our flight to Amsterdam is about 2 1/2 hours, then a 90minute layover, and then our long flight to Houston. We have an hour layover there before we fly to Phoenix and land around 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Which will be close to midnight in Europe! But I don't think we will be tired. We will be excited to see our families and wear some clean clothes.

Adios, Au Revoir, Auf Wiedersehen, and Ciao! And goodbye!