Northwestern University Athletics
2010 Italian Tour Player Blog
8/29/2010 12:00:00 AM | Men's Basketball
Aug. 29, 2010
Greetings NU fans,
I believe Day 1 of our trip to Italy can best be described as a fight between jet lag and great excitement. After a long nine-hour flight from Chicago to Paris followed by another two-hour flight from Paris to Rome, all of us were more than ready to test the quality of Italian mattresses. In order to overcome the jet lag, however, sleeping was left out of the immediate agenda. After we landed we met our guides Dave and Sara, who work with Basketball Travelers and will travel with us for the remainder of our trip.
Our first order of business now that we had landed was to eat, as we had not had much of anything to eat besides the small meals on the plane. That's the first thing I have learned about Italy-Italians know how to eat! At both lunch and dinner, the food just kept coming and coming, and pretty much all of it was delicious! Dinner took us two hours to eat and consisted of steak, pasta, freschetta bread, zucchini, and several other dishes. They served so much food that each of us went through at least five different plates. I can already tell I'm going to miss this food once we touch back down in the States.
Though we were tired from jet lag as mentioned before, we still took the time to take a sightseeing bus tour of Rome. Unfortunately my fatigue temporarily convinced me that my bus seat was in fact a king-sized bed, as I promptly fell asleep on the bus after we ate. Fortunately, Dave's voice over the bus intercom and the constant chatter of the guys kept me from sleeping through the tour. The tour took us through some of Ancient Rome, as we got to see the Colosseum, and we also went through Vatican City. Tomorrow we will get a much better glimpse of Ancient Rome when we take a walking tour.
All in all, our first day in Italy was quite invigorating. By tomorrow we should be better recovered from the jet lag and ready to see all that Rome has to offer. We do realize, however, that we are here to play basketball and we hope to start off on the right foot by securing a victory in our first game tomorrow night!
Thank you for all your support,
