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It was time to speed things up again and this morning we were leaving for Roma. It was a 620 am train to catch and this time we had asked the hotel to reserve one of the 2 taxis in town to take us to the train station. Our local train took us to Milan, the fashion capital of the world. This was apparent in the train station itself as thousands of commuters and locals were on their way to work dressed to impress. We transferred in Milano to our train headed to Rome, which was also filled with commuters in suits. We enjoyed the ride which included snacks, newspapers we couldnt read any other first class amenities. The Eurarail passes we had included mostly first class tickets which was a nice treat. Nonetheless, the trains had all been really nice. Our conversation was mostly an ongoing discussion on who was cooler-the French or the Italians-no consensus was reached so it will be an ongoing debate. The train ride through was through the Italian countryside that included rolling hills and vineyards...just beautiful.
We got into Roma at around noon and hike in the heat to our hotel (the directions they
provided were not clear...or helpful). The hotel was near the Department of Defense which was neat to see and was very Romanesque on the inside with the high celings and high curtains. A tiny elevator that could fit 2 people max took us to our floor. We freshened up and headed back out for a good Roman meal. A woman who checked in after us overheard us requesting recommendations for lunch and suggested a cafeteria style that had delcious food, mostly frequented by locals and had everything you could think of. It sounded great! but we also menu shopped as we walked along in that direction. When we did find the deli, we were excited to see the plethora of fresh plates that were displayed. One side of the restaurant was entirely filled with hundreds of types of desserts while the other was the lunch options where the locals came on their lunch break. We had grilled vegetables and fresh mozzarella-it was such a treat to have an experience like a local and not a tourist. We were fueled for the day and so we walked and walked and walked Roma. We saw the sights, met tourists, chatted with locals,
did some shopping and walked the city from one end to the next. It wasnt until 930 pm when we exhausted and hungry from all the walked. We selected a restaurant near the Vatican, enjoyed an out of this world eggplant parm as local children played in the street next to us, and walked some more back in the direction of our hotel. Of course, we stopped at the Trevi Fountain to throw a coin us (which guarantees your return to Roma according to legend) and at the Coliseum which are both must sees at night. We finally got back to the hotel at 12 am-12 hours and thousands of steps later.
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Tot: 0.337s; Tpl: 0.026s; cc: 6; qc: 45; dbt: 0.1097s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
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