Days 1 & 2

Buona Sera (Good evening) everyone,

I'll get pictures up tomorrow (if we have internet tomorrow night). We flew into Amsterdam yesterday and had an 8 hour lay-over before flying to Rome. After spending about an hour trying to buy a train ticket (first, we couldn't get the ticket machines to take a Credit Card, then we couldn't them to take cash, it was a mess) we made it to the central station and walked over to the Anne Frank House. The museum was pretty amazing - very touching. We walked back to the city center and had dinner then rode the train back to Schiphol (the airport).

The flight to Rome was uneventful but trying to rent a car was not - long story short, we got one but ended up paying about $100 more than our reservation confirmed - we'll try to get that corrected tomorrow. The rental agency called a Bed & Breakfast for us to stay out, which was very nice. Everything seemed to be going great until I realized that my "international phone" has to be unlocked from the States first - a lot of good that does me. Oh well, I brought the wrong charger anyway. Then, I went to put on my shorts to go to bed, oops, I grabbed a pair of khaki pants, not shorts. Then, as if that wasn't enough, I plugged in my laptop to the power converter and laid down for about 15 minutes, until I was startled by a loud "POP" and a terrible smell - the power inverter had blown-up. Actually, something melted...

Putting all that behind us we drove to Napoli (Naples) this morning. All I can say is that I thought LA Traffic was bad - bah, it is NOTHING! the Italians are psychotic. There are no laws on the road: Slow truck in front of you? No worries, just pull into oncoming traffic and zoom around, they'll move! Can't find a parking place? No worries, just park in the middle of the road. Don't want to stop for that pesky red light? you don't have to! Really, there are no words to describe driving in Italy. We finally ended up in Pompei at a nice little hotel. I for one am glad to have a nice safe place to rest my head. Speaking of which...