Roman Ramblings...part 1

Part 1: Transportation and arrival

Well, to begin with...it was very interesting flying for soooooo looooong! Kinda fun to people watch but then you sorta get tired of seeing the same folks after a few hours. Our flight out of Dallas flew to Frankfurt (which was where our passports were stamped, NOT in Italy...kinda strange) which was I think 9 hours and then from Frankfurt a short 1.5 hr. flight on to Rome.

We landed and proceeded through the usual gates and customes type areas (no frisking tho) on to Baggage Claim. (yes...capitalized because of the HORROR of BC!) Off we go all excited and optimistic and OMG we are in Italy and feeling like cool foreign travelers, when we get to the Baggage Claim area. Us and the other couple hundred people or so from our flight. And we wait. More flights arrive. Milan. Paris. Frankfurt. And we wait. Berlin. Nice. (as in [niece] France). London. And still we wait. OUR FLIGHT DISAPPEARS FROM THE LIST. OMG! Oh, and did I mention that out of all the baggage carousels ALL of the baggage from these flights are on ONE carousel. ALL ON THE SAME CAROUSEL?!?! Are these Italian people crazy?!?! Major cities, a gazillion people at this point, pushing someone from their party forward so they can crane their necks and make a mad jump for their suitcase and knock others out of the way to yank it off the belt if it so much as resembles the bag they checked. Some were successful, some weren't.

Some very nice Italian Manly Men Airport Workers (heh) began pulling bags off the carousel and sitting them to the side in a roped off area. People began to jostle some for position around the carousel and the bag overflow area keeping a sharp eye out for their luggage.

At this point it had been roughly 30+ minutes (forever in American Baggage Carousel Time) and we were starting to get a little panicky and were only calmed by the fact that others from our flight were still there and waiting too. (Nice thing about the long flight is we all recognize each other at this point).

Warren began circulating around the carousel and bag areas watching for our luggage while I held down the spot that I had gotten right beside the carousel because our flight had been one of the first ones there. So of course I had a great spot. :)

People began questioning each other, Where are you from? What was your flight? How long have you been here? Sometimes they asked me in English other times Italian and once I think in French...kinda flattering to think I don't reek "American."

Anyway it took 45 MINUTES before baggage from our flight, which had gone off the list of arrivals, to come around. Needless to say we did the mad dive and surfaced with all of our bags. Yay!

Our next hurdle was to find the airport transport that I had paid for to take us from the airport to the hotel, which wasn't too hard and then we had to wait for more people to arrive (another hour) because the next group departure wasn't until...well...a certain time...because at this point time was irrelevant and we were operating on different hours. (Our room...nice nap...notice how the bed takes up almost the WHOLE room?!) ------>

Needless to say we made it to the hotel before dark (I think around 4ish...we got there around noonish) and immediately took a shower in the way cool hotel shower and collapsed on the bed for a nap. So exhausting getting somewhere! (Pictures of our shower....) --->

We surfaced around 8ish, perfect time for Italian dinner and proceeded off down the street to find a little Pizzaria that was listed in our guidebook for our area of Rome. (We stayed in the Trastevere section...THE best food in the city is in this area for great prices!). We eventually found it....mmmm....pizza....SO good.

And that was our first day. ha.

Other adventures in trasportation is how small all of the cars are! They are the smartcars...here is a random pic from the web to show you how very tiny they are. How do people really fit!? Amazing! Also smaller brand cars and many motorcycles & mopeds zip around the streets.

Also, they park them within CENTIMETERS of each other! How everyone isn't dented and dinged I don't know.

I LOVED the bus and train system! It was so easy to get around! And although it doesn't seem like they check for tickets if they do a random raid and you don't have a VALID bus ticket (you have to stamp the ticket in a little machine in the bus when you get on) then you have to immediately pay 100 euros or be hauled off to Italian jail!!! Scary!

Overall tho it was very easy to get around and not to much downtime waiting on mass transit, only occasionally.

We also did a train out of town to Pompeii that I'll talk more about later and it was Super easy to figure out. It makes me less nervous about maybe backpacking around Europe sometime in the future based upon the ease that we had with figuring out the Italian Mass Transit.