I wouldn’t say my arm is all better.

I wouldn’t say it because it’s not.

And they said that it was going to take at least two days before I could really tell how well the shot had worked.

But my friends, the shot has definitely had an effect.

My arm is still screwed up, I want to be clear.

But we’ve only just crossed the 24-hour mark as I started recording this episode.

I have some optimism.

I have some optimism.

But we’re not talking about my arm and my nerves today.

We’re talking about Italy.

Let’s start.

Your Daily Lex So attentive listeners, or listeners with good memories, or both, may recall that before I left, I was before I left for the Italy trip, I was going to sleep earlier and earlier and waking up earlier and earlier in hopes of sleeping well on the plane.

It worked okay.

I wouldn’t say it worked amazingly, but it worked okay.

I got maybe four and a half to five hours of sleep on the plane, which was less than I wanted, but not terrible.

One of the issues was food.

They were bringing food and I did want to eat.

I also had to decide as I boarded the plane, or as we got to the airport even, I said to Lauren, like, when does my Ursuline eating change?

Because I had said that when I was on vacation, Ursuline is my trainer, that I wasn’t going to be doing, I wasn’t going to count calories the same way.

I was going to eat whatever I wanted, whatever.

And Lauren’s like, oh, it’s here at the airport.

So I got a drink at the airport lounge.

I ate a cookie at the airport lounge.

Like, I did it up.

I probably had two cookies at the airport lounge.

Let’s be real.

Ate on the plane, had a drink on the plane, whatever.

Sleep as best I can.

When we land, we got to go hard.

We got through the airport pretty quick.

We got to the hotel and this was one of the only hotels where when we got there early, they wouldn’t let us check in early.

The room wasn’t available.

I don’t think it was them being mean, but we were just hanging out in their lobby.

So we get to, you know, we take a taxi to their lobby and we’re changing a bit, washing up, sunblocking, and then we hit the town.

We had tours that first day.

We had to go hard that first day.

We landed at 735 in the morning local time.

And then we were really just kind of diving right in.

So like I said, first, we’re in the hotel lobby area and whatever, doing the best we can.

But then, you know, now it’s like time to start exploring Rome.

And I would say that, listen, various of my kids in different permutations were bummed not to go on this trip, even though they were all doing things they wanted to be doing.

In Ani’s case, staying home.

In Liam and Sarah’s case, going to camp.

But they would not have done this well.

So we went to the Basilica of San Clemente on that first day, parts of which were built in like the 1100s or something like that.

We walked through a park and then boom, all you are there is at the Colosseum.

In Rome, and then boom, there’s the Colosseum.

We didn’t explore it too closely because we had a tour there later.

So we walked back to the hotel at some point after exploring a little bit on foot to see if our room was ready, which it was.

And the plan was to, actually, I’m sorry, the plan was to go to the hotel, see if our room was ready, and then get lunch.

But on the walk back to the hotel, we passed a place that smelled insanely good.

So we stopped and got lunch there.

It was our first Italian pizza in Italy.

It was delicious.

We went back to the hotel.

Our room was ready.

We freshened up.

I got a coffee.

And then boom, we were off on our tour.

The tour was very cool.

We saw Julius Caesar’s tomb.

We saw old buildings from a zillion years ago.

And then we went all over the Colosseum.

This was our official Colosseum tour.

We were on the floor where the gladiators fought to the death.

We walked all over the place within the Colosseum.

We had a kind of, as it turned out, all-access Colosseum tour stuff.

So we got to see a ton of it, which was cool.

Then that tour of the Colosseum and around the Colosseum was several hours long.

We really got to see a lot of stuff.

Every tour group is annoying in its own ways, especially when people don’t keep up or when they get lost, both of which happened.

But we had some pretty excellent tour guides.

So it was good.

And then the Colosseum’s size and scope was crazy.

And just learning about how they got water there and how they had water irrigation systems so they could clean up the blood.

The tour guide explains it all.

And then one of the people on the tour is like, well, where did the water come from?

Stuff you just explained.

It was insane.

And she was remarkably patient.

And when that tour finally finished, I will say this, all of our time in Italy was incredibly hot, like obscenely hot.

It was 100 degrees Fahrenheit and maybe Celsius too.

Almost every day we had pizza.

Almost every day we had pasta.

And almost every day we had gelato.

That first day, for the record, I had salted caramel.

And then for dinner, we did the pasta thing.

So yeah, that was day one.

Just day one.

We slept great.

We forced ourselves to stay up until like 9 p.m.

or so, maybe even 10 p.m., and then slept beautifully well and had our next day in Rome, which I’ll tell you about tomorrow.

Lex.