Finding Nancy

Dear Friends,
We have arrived! Rome is alive with smells, sounds and sights that we are finding to be enchanting and so unique from the usual dust of home in Phoenix. Our hotel room is filled with all of these when we open the gigantic window that also overlooks a delicious, tiny sidewalk cafe.

Our flight landed yesterday *Tues, April 14th* around 9am and we were shuttled to our hotel, the Exedra at Piazza Della Repubblica, where we were warmly greeted by the founder of Pure Romance, Patty Brisben, her son Matt Brisben and the new Vice Presidents Cheryl Force and Chris MacIntire. The hotel has giant columns at the entrance and marble stairs so old that you can see the slope on each step from hundreds of years of use.

The Saturday night before we left Gabe and I had both been too excited to sleep well, Sunday night we were up late packing and of course had to leave at 4am Monday to begin this journey. Eagerly toting our luggage we explored our way through the wide marble hallways to find our room. Oh my! Where to begin? First, I am more than in love with the padded cloth walls which go up about 12 feet. Then the wall continues about another 6 feel with beautiful decorative molding and topped with crown molding. The headboard on the king size bed is padded leather and there's a pad of buttons on each side of the bed to control all of the room's lighting. The bathroom is all marble as well and although we've never seen a bed so inviting and were beyond ready to crash, to deter the longer effects of jet lag we freshed up and hit the town!

... to be continued...