Blogs from Lazio, Italy, Europe - page 7

Day 1 : Friday 6 September : Rome We arrive in Rome around 2pm at our first AirBNB and was very nervous. Cute street, Via Guilia, but the taxi driver (€46) says ‘it can’t be here’. Rest assured, the caretaker called out to us ? yay!! Poor Graham is in agony with a bad tooth. The kind hostess took us in search of a dentist. Our first real view of beautiful Rome was the bridge to the tiny Tiber Island in Rome (Isosla Tiberina), where the hospital is. There are no dentists open on a Friday afternoon as we trek through the gorgeous Trastavere but the Chemist gave Graham some antibiotics to get him through the weekend. It was nice exploring Trastavere, a nice treed suburb. Search for a SIM Card (€30) and then off for ... read more

This was a huge day… We were up at 6am as we had to be at a meeting point by 8:15am for our 4 hour ‘Colosseum Underground and Ancient Rome Tour’ by Rome Experience Tours. It is about a 45 minute walk to the Colosseum from the apartment but at 7:15am, it was cool and much quieter on the roads. The walk to the Largo Gaetna Agnesi was enjoyable and we waited for a while until we found our guide, Vincenzo, and were given our headphone sets. It was a small group of 9 - 5 of us (me, Jo, Sharon, Shelley and John) and 2 American couples. We first walked through some back streets, going back in time as we looked at some Medieval buildings and heard about the more modern Rome. From there, we ... read more

It was an early start, leaving the house just after 7am to drive to the airport and return the hire car. After checking in and going through Immigration, I met up with Paula and Sharon in Duty Free and we went up to the lounge to wait for our flight to board. CX146 made a 1 hour stop at Cairns, before continuing on to Hong Kong. There were a few bumps during the flight but it was reasonable and after 11 hours all up, we landed at Hong Kong airport at 8:20pm. Our transit time was supposed to only be 4 hours 15 minutes, but due to riots outside Hong Kong airport, transport links were shut down and many flights were delayed. Our flight was re-scheduled for a very late 02:40 takeoff (a delay of 2.5 ... read more

(Travelers were Rob, Dina and Laurel) Days 1 and 2 Friday June 14-Saturday June 15 We left the house at 9am and made the 3 hour drive to Atlanta. We encountered some traffic in Atlanta and there was a lot of congestion at the airport, but we got off okay. It was a quick flight to Charlotte where we caught our flight to the Rome airport. The flight was more than 9 hours long, through the night. We did manage to get some rest and it went by fairly quickly. We even had a fairly good dinner on the flight. When we landed in Rome it was already 9:40am on Saturday, Rome time. We were all so excited to be in Italy, that we stayed pretty alert on the easy ride (thank you Welcome Pickups) to ... read more

After completing travel to the lower 48 states by motorcycle, and finishing Alaska and Hawaii by cruise, Jody and I decided it was time to tackle Europe. I have been to a few European countries during my time in the military back around 1975 (England, Germany, Italy, Turkey), and I have been on a short business trip in the early 2000's to Scotland and Germany, but in 1975, I was too young to appreciate anything more about Europe than the local beers, and in the 2000's there wasn't really any time to explore. Jody has never been outside the United States, so it's all new to her. Since we have been on many cruises, we considered cruises to Europe, but dismissed them for the most part as we wanted to actually experience staying in local hotels ... read more