Trip in review: Rome

The Colosseum really is impressive. It can hold thousands of people. They could empty the building in minutes — and they didn't have to worry about traffic jams!
 

All shook up

Almost as soon as we walked out of the temple, out phones started going off with messages from people back home wondering if we were OK.

Wha —?

We soon learned that while we were incommunicado, a magnitude 5.1 earthquake had hit just outside of Athens. It shook things up a bit, but nobody was hurt and there wasn't any significant damage.

Apparently it struck while the hotel staff was servicing our room. It looked like whoever was cleaning stopped in mid-mop. There were bags and rags left in our room, and the bed was only mostly made!

The one thing that made me happy, though, was it gave me a chance to make this joke — there are few places other than Athens where it would work!

The temple doors seem to say to me... we're closed!

The above cartoon is mostly true.

When we got to Rome, the temple was closed.

We’d checked the Tools app to see when the Rome Temple would be open. The information wasn't consistent, and apparently it's updated in real time. When it's nighttime in Rome, the app says that the temple is closed  — which was a bit confusing as we made our travel arrangements back home.

We talked to the folks in the Visitors Center, who told us that the temple offers sessions in the mornings two days a week, in the afternoons two days a week, and all day on Saturday. Today, they said, was an afternoon day.

Our original plan was to do a session in the morning, do some sightseeing in the afternoon, then fly back to Athens in the evening. We decided to bag the sightseeing. We'd probably have a chance to do that again, but this would likely be the only chance we had to see the temple.

We hung out at the Visitors Center for a while (and met some lovely sister missionaries: Sorella Hyatt and Sorella Weaver!), ran back into town to get some lunch, and made it back in time to get ready for the 4:30 session.

Despite all the changes of plans, it was so worth it! The temple was amazing, we made our connecting flight back to Greece, and all was well...

...except for the earthquake that happened that day in Athens. More about that tomorrow!