Rome,
Italy
Monday, October 8, 2007
I left Vienna behind and flew to Rome to start the final part of my 3 month adventure. I arrived in Rome just after dinner time on my Austrian airlines (one of the best airlines I have flown with in this trip) flight. As planned my driver was waiting with a sign with my name on it and off he took me in the silver merc. I never thought I would find such a person in Italy but he wasn't a football fan and preferred rugby to football. The traveling today had gone according to plan so this meant old Murphy's law had to interrupt my trip again when I got to the hotel and found that I had no reservation. They checked their computer and found nothing and then they checked the travel agents website and found I did have a reservation. The only problem was they were booked out for the night. Maybe because I was tired, maybe because I had got use to this happening but I didn't get overly upset about this I just stood there. To the credit of the night manager he quickly booked me into a hotel down the road and called a taxi to take me there. His next comment I found quite amusing as he came out from behind the desk he looked at me and in his best English said "I suppose you want to kill me about now", well all I could do was laugh. He then walked over to the bar poured me a free glass of champagne whilst I waited for the taxi. The taxi then arrived and the manager paid him and gave me the card of the hotel and told me to ring the next morning and they would come and pick me up. I got to the new hotel and whilst it wasn't as flash as where I had just been it still was better then a few of places I had stayed on this trip.
The next morning I headed back to the original hotel and around lunch was able to check in. I was sorting out my luggage when a knock came on the door and a few fellow travelers knocked on my door and asked if I want to go for a walk. We decided to take the train into the city but none of us had a map so we had no idea where we were heading. We eventually got off and wandered for an hour aimlessly before finding a map at a bus stop (I did the smart thing and took a photo of it so I could use it for the rest of the day) which we used to navigate our way to the Colosseum and the old roman forum ruins. We then took a combination of trains back out to where we were staying and I headed up to my room to complete some more washing. I then came down and had a quiet dinner (for one) in the hotel's restaurant. The reason I mention this is I was able to finally have some to eat on this trip that I rarely find - baby octopus. It was in a penne pasta and tasted fantastic. After dinner I had a few quite beers and headed off to bed.
The next day I spent a quiet day wandering around Rome before heading back to the hotel to meet up with my contiki group and the start of my "Simply Italy" tour.
