The catacombs weren't meant to be

May 23rd--We had planned to go see some of the Catacombs today. We even left the apartment early to try to beat the heat. On a side note, we didn't leave as early as we had liked because Mike decided to shave his beard off. He didn't tell us and when he came out of the shower, it was a shock. As a matter of fact, Abby started crying and saying she wanted her daddy back. It was all the kids could talk about most of the day. Anyway, we left the apartment headed for the train station. We had boxed up a bunch of winter and unnecessary stuff to ship back to the States so our first stop was Poste Italiane at the train station. The first post office told us that they don't ship boxes at that location, but the one at platform 1 does ship boxes. We were at platform 25 so we walked over to the other location towing our box along. We got up to the counter to ship our box and soon found out that we needed to have our passport. Well, we did not have it on us. So, Mike left me and the kids with the box at the train station while he went back to the apartment. It took him right at 50 minutes total to get the apartment and back. We finally got the box mailed and by then it was almost lunch time. The catacombs close between 12 and 3:30 everyday so we blew them off and headed to lunch. After lunch, we went back to the apartment to rest before heading to the movie. We went to the 4:15 showing of "Night at the Museum 2". We all really enjoyed another English movie in Rome. It's been great to see so many movies.

May 24th--Since we missed out on the catacombs yesterday and today was our last day in Rome, we decided to give it one more shot to go see some catacombs. We decided on going to the Catacombs Priscilla. We followed Rick Steves' directions about taking a bus from the Termini station and told the bus driver where we were headed. The bus driver told us that he would let us know when to get off the bus. Well, he did tell us and we got off. Again, tried to follow Rick Steves' directions on how to get to the catacombs. After at least 30 minutes of turning circles and asking many people (and almost everyone telling us a different direction)where the catacombs were, we were running into the same problem as yesterday where it was almost noon and they would be closed. We were lost and hot so we figured out that we were close to a Metro stop so we walked to it, got on and headed back to the apartment. At that point, we decided the catacombs just weren't meant to be! Come to find out the bus driver told us to get off at the wrong stop...