When In Rome…
Saturday, May 30th, 2009
Sunday, May 10, 2009 was Mother’s Day and my cousin Chris and I celebrated the holiday by taking the Mother of all walking tours through one of the most famous cities in the world: Roma. For those not in the know, that is the correct name of the city that we Westerners refer to as Rome. After you read this account of this exhausting day, you will understand why I ended it with blisters on my feet – and enough material to create the longest Catsafterme posting ever. Read the rest of this entry »
For the most part, everything that I was experiencing during my Guatemala trip was a complete surprise as I had gone into the trip without any research or preconceived notions about what I would be seeing. The Mayan ruins of Tikal, however, were a bit of an exception as this was a landmark I had actually heard of and took the liberty of seeking out some info about before I left for the trip. Of all of the locations in Guatemala, this was probably the most famous and the one that I was most looking forward to. 
I generally always despise the week before vacation – with so much to do and prepare for, and seemingly so little time to do it. The week preceding Friday, May 8, 2009, was no exception, but thankfully when the chips were down on the Thursday before, I quickly and painlessly packed for my trip to Italy, gathered my passport, notified my credit card company, and still had time to watch a couple of episodes of Three’s Company on DVD. 
Our group had a much earlier start on the morning of Tuesday, March 31, 2009. Our bus was scheduled to depart at 7am, so Bob and I trudged our way down to a nice hearty traditional Guatemalan-tourist breakfast in the hotel restaurant – still with the omelet chef, lunchmeats, bacon, and…well, you get the picture. Bob and I opted to enjoy our eats in the outside dining area by the pool this time. 
We had another relatively leisurely morning on Monday, March 30, 2009, as we set out to tour Guatemala City. Since this is the city in which we were staying it didn’t require that we left too terribly early, so Bob and I were able to enjoy another one of those gigantic breakfast buffets with the eggs, sausages, bacon, omelettes, guacamole, lunchmeat sandwiches, gourmet cheeses, traditional mexican dishes, toast, and array of juices. I love describing these meals. We met our bus at 9am and embarked on the tour.