The Trip to Rome

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As our bus to Rome is not until late this afternoon, we got a slow start to today and didn't get up until the Sunday church bells started ringing. Evy and I took a final walk though the little streets, stopping at the small stores selling ceramics or lace and bought a few postcards. After lunch back at the apartment, we tidied up and waiting to just before 4 before carrying our stuff down to entrance. At the reception, they informed us a taxi would charge 20 Euro for the short (5 minute ride) to the train station, so we opted to try for the public bus instead. Unfortunately, the bus never came and we ended up wheeling our luggage the 20 minutes to the train station, arriving a full 40 minutes early.

Our bus was to leave at 5 pm, but at 4:45 there is no sign of either the bus, nor other passengers waiting for it. This isn't a good sign. By 5:30, there is still no bus so we are sure something is wrong. A couple are waiting for another bus and while I investigate the next corner for the existence of a bus, Evy asks them if they are waiting for the same bus. While determining that they are not, the time is mentioned. After a little while the husband, an Australian, comes over and asks me if I know what time it it. I respond 5:30 but he says no, it is 6:30, the clocks went back an hour last night !
I make a quick call to the Rome apartment to tell them what has happened and we scramble to come up with another plan. It seems our best option now is to take the local train to Naples (about an hour away) and then hope to find a train from there to Rome that doesn't get in too late. We haul our stuff back up to the train level and buy tickets to Naples.

Fortunately, when we get to Naples we find we can get a train in 30 minutes for Rome and it is actually cheaper than the bus would have been as it is an intercity train. We call the apartment owner in Rome and inform her of our new, and later, arrival time.

The intercity trains our less luxurious and slower than the Eurostars, but are about 1/3 the price and still twice as fast as the bus. We get into Rome about 10:15 at night. Our plan is to take the Rome subway, which connects directly to the main train station, to a stop close to the apartment and then take a taxi from there. Unfortunately, there are no taxis to be flagged at this subway station and we end up taking the bus the last 15 minutes to the apartment.

When we existed the bus it was shortly after 11 pm. I wasn't sure how safe Rome was at night, but the presence of people walking their dogs or out strolling was somewhat reassuring. Our printed instructions had us looking for a street to the right of the bus stop, but there was no such place. After about 20 minutes of looking Evy called the apartment owner and she talked us in, using landmarks Evy pointed out to direct us. As it turned out the instructions were wrong.

At this point, I have very diminished expectations for this apartment, but when we got there, it turned out to be great with high ceilings and good sized rooms. The owner made no mention of our late arrival (it was now getting on to midnight) but instead sat us down for a briefing of what to do and where to go in Rome as well as a explanation of the apartment and the neighbourhood. It was an excellent overview and well beyond what a hotel would do.

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