The Plan For Our 1st Day In Rome

Jerry Writing. We get into Rome on Monday morning. I've already been warned that I cannot lead the group on a forced march around Rome minutes after arriving. I know the city well, having been a student there in the early 1960s.

Here's the story behind that. I was attending a Jesuit university, Xavier University, in Cincinnati. There was a posting on a bulletin board that Loyola University in Chicago was looking for 100 of the top Jesuit-school scholars in the country to help found a new school in Rome. So I applied and was selected. Imagine! I was one of those top scholars.

Later I learned that if a student had both a heartbeat and $1,100, that student was a top scholar.

So here's the plan for the first day. We arrive Monday in the early morning. We - wife Robin, her brother Jack, his wife Wendi and I - should be in the apartment we rented by about 10am. Some may want to rest after an all-night flight. I'll be too excited. So I'll hit the streets of the neighborhood where our apartment is. Size up the area. Later, when everyone's up for it, we'll go to the grocery and get a few things for the little bit of eating we'll do at the place. In the late afternoon we'll go to the Forum area and explore those ruins. We'll eat somewhere in that section of Rome. The idea is to stay over there as darkness falls since the Forum and the Colliseum are bathed in light at night. Very, very pretty. Late Monday or early Tuesday we'll let you know what really happened on our first day.