Rome Day 1

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For this trip we had chosen to fly Ryan Air out of Liverpool Airport. As always, we made sure to leave plenty of time and prepare ourselves for any incident that might make us late since Ryan Air love to chuck people off their flight. Impressively, we arrived in Liverpool with plenty of time and boarded the plane with absolutely no hassles. We even booked our coach ticket in advance so that we could get straight on the bus when we arrived in Chiampino. As we sat on the plane we marveled out how easy the whole trip had been so far and wondered what could possibly go wrong at this point. We soon found out. As we began to descend into Chiampino we hit an incredibly thick low cloud and were forced to pull up quite violently. This immediately sent Mary into airsickness and she was forced to spend the rest of the landing trying to focus on not vomiting. After circling around for 15 minutes we finally landed and deboarded the plane in rainy Italy. We then set off to find our bus and ended up sitting toward the back, but felt grateful that we found seats together at all. In the spirit of the trip so far, the first half of the 40 minute bus ride went smoothly until an accident on the highway caused a massive traffic jam about a mile before our exit. We sat on the highway for nearly an hour and finally arrived in Rome car sick and about 2 hours after we'd landed in Chiampino. Refusing to allow ourselves to despair on our vacation we put our chins up and headed for the taxis. When we arrived outside the bus station we found a queue of about 50 people waiting for taxis. We joined the masses and waited patiently for about 15 minutes until we realized that no taxies had arrived at all during that time. At this rate it would be tomorrow before we even got to the front of the line. Thinking ourselves hardened travelers we decided that we could navigate our way to the hotel using the metro system instead. Feeling very clever for outsmarting all those fools waiting outside in the rain for taxis we arrived at the metro station in the bus terminal to find it closed. Why would the metro station be closed at 10pm? Well, we had no idea either. So then we were faced with a decision. We could go back out and wait in the longest line ever or we could walk to the next taxi rank and hope it was better. We decided to wheel our suitcases in the rain and take the first cab we could find. We walked for about 20 minutes and still hadn't seen a single cab despite passing several deserted taxi ranks. We were starting to feel that it was hopeless and that we were going to have to walk the entire hour to the hotel. The rain was really starting to come down so we decided to stop for dinner while there was still a restaurant open. We turned into the first place we saw that looked open and settled in with our wet clothes and suitcases. To our relief, the food was amazing. We had a Caprese salad as a starter and it was the best thing I'd ever eaten. Finally, we realized that we were in Rome! After thoroughly enjoying our dry meal we set out again toward the hotel. We walked along for another 15 or 20 minutes before realizing that we were lost. By now it was about midnight and still raining cats and dogs. We came upon a police man in a booth in the middle of a square and asked him directions. Luckily he spoke english and pointed us on the right direction. He also answered the question which we had been asking ourselves all night: where have all the cabs gone? As it turns out, there was a transportation strike on tonight which meant there were no cabs, metro trains or buses running all day and night. Lucky us. So we gathered ourselves up and kept walking. We finally arrived at our hotel around 12:45 am wet and exhausted. We checked in and went upstairs. When we arrived in our room we were delighted to see that we had a Jacuzzi tub in our bathroom. After soaking our feet we crashed into bed and fell asleep.



For the full set of photos from this trip visit: Flickr

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