Greetings and sorry for the delayed post. Here is the update:

We enjoyed Toledo. I had never been and it really is cute little town. We checked out the Cathedral which is something else. Lot,s of El Grecos and oppulance. (PS the period is the new apostrophe because I canàt find it on the keyboard) Dan still wasn,t feeling well so we decided to catch the 7:20 p.m. Ave (speed train). We got there a good half hour before and thought we were in good shape. Ed stood in line for a while only to realize that the 7:20 was long sold out. SHoot. Oh well there was a 9:20...except we realized at about 7:40 that too had been sold out (no announcement or anything). The 9:20 was the last train for the day so we thought fast and booked it to the bus station. We amazingly caught the 8:00 bus and were please with navigation abilities sans Dan.

Tuesday was a quiet evening checking out the Royal Palace in Madrid and napping and packing for an early morning on Wednesday. Dan joined us Tuesday night.

Wednesday we had to be at the Metro at 6 a.m. We chose to take the Metro because it would cost 5 E vs. having to take two cabs (squeezing 5 in a cab is not permitted in Spain). We made it through two transfers up and downstairs with luggage with out incident. We were in great shape until we were 3 stops away from the airport when the train didn,t go for a while. Hmmm... we waited and there was an announcement that the train would not be moving. The entire train, including us, deboarded. Dan asked and found out that there was problems between this stop and the next one. He no sooner asked when they announcing they would be reboarding the train. It was too late for that train--completely full at that point and closterphobic jean would have not have done well. We waited for the next train which came to the statiion, but never left. We sat on it for nearly 25 minutes. Finally, we decided to split and go upstairs and hail a cab (two of them). To top it off, they randomly had flight information and we learned that our flight time was 30 minutes earlier than when we had booked the tickets in July (unbenounced to us until this poinst). We were under the gun. Ed and dad quickly got a cab, but it took a couple of minutes for Mom, Dan and me. The cabbie drove like a bat out of hell and we arrived at 7:25--our boarding time. We ran to the ticket counter (as soon as we could find it), ran to secruity and sprinted to the gate. We were as close to humanly possible to missing the flight without actually missing it. The biggest issue is that this airline,s next flight was on Friday.

We eventually made it to our hotel in Rome and were beat. We all napped and got some dinner at a great place--Als 39. I had the best tortellini. No offense to Spanish food, but the food here has been consistantly tremendous. Anyway, the only thing we did for the rest of Wednesday was see the Trevi fountain at night. Gorgeous.

Thursday we headed to the Colosseum and the Forum. We spent the entire day there--such interesting historical and architectural implications. We also had about 50 attempts at taking a Christmas picture. If you happen to get one this year, please marvel at it because it was alot of work.

Friday we did some smaller things: pantheon, trevi fountain (again), spanish steps, and some shopping. It started to pour at about 2 in the afternoon though, so walking around became trecherous. We returned to Al,s 39 for dinner. I had the tortellini again. It was still good.

Today we headed to the Vatican. I have six minutes so I have to type fast, but we went through the museum saw the Sistine Chapel, all was looking good as we went over to St. Peters and we noticed a VERY short line going in. Great. Not great. They had cleared everyone out because the Pope was giving mass at 5 for advent we learned. Mom had talked about seeing Michaelangelos Pieta for weeks prior to the trip. We leave early tomorrow morning. I was so sad. You could attend the Mass but needed to book tickets through your church before you left. Ahhhh....what do we do. We discussed some hairbrained attempt at stopping by on the way to the airport. Mostly we just stood around the people in line (which was not much longer) and thought about trying to buy tickets from someone. JOkes were made about getting seats in the upper left of the alter and being willing to sit in the nosebleeds. Luck struck when I saw a guy holding a bunch of tickets. I had Dan run after him and we were able to get 5 tickets FOR FREE (he had been passing them out as part of promoting his guided tour of hte vatican museum)! So anyway, we attended the service (not a mass) and saw the Pope. It was pretty amazing. We also caught a glimpse of the Pieta from behind a curtain (where the Pope had entered). Great dinner toinght, and we leave tomorro early. Out of time...