WHILE IN ROME

WEATHER:  Beautiful Tops 25C - Lows 12C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY:  Chelsey Arrived

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Can’t think of a single thing

BUYS OF THE DAY:  Gelato for 2EUR to eat at the Trevi Fountain

WORD OF THE DAY: - always written phonetically – Chow= informal good-bye

Chelsey’s here, Chelsey’s here!!!!!  Have I mentioned that Chelsey’s here.

 I had a pretty relaxed morning at The St Regis Grand.  Left the hotel for a spot of lunch, picking a café not far from the hotel, as Chelsey was due in at 1pm.  Thought I was doing really well, there were a lot of locals sitting eating at this particular café, so I took a seat.   The waiter was really sweet as the menu was only in Italian, so he ran through it with me.  After selecting a pasta dish, white wine and a tea I waited in anticipation of having my first pasta in Rome.  Well I had to hide my shock when he bought out the pasta and it was still in its microwaveable plastic plate!!!!  Too funny.  When people walked past and looked in, I felt bad I was in Rome eating a frozen pasta meal!!!!!!  It was very tasty in their defence, but it certainly wasn’t made by mama in the back kitchen.  I also paid 4EUR for the tea, so I won’t be recommending that place to anyone, especially for the tea which I could have got from Macca’s 10m down the street for 1EUR!

Chelsey got to the hotel fine and after a quick shower we headed down to the Trevi Fountain which is about a 15 minute walk from the hotel.  It was SO busy.  If you wanted to get down to the fountain to throw your coin in over your shoulder, it would have been messy with a lot of shoving and pushing with people 6 deep down there.  It was amazing to see so many people there.  I guess being Easter Thursday and the Pope has his Easter service on Sunday; there would be a lot of people in town.  We decided not to risk going down to the fountain, and just ate some Gelati and people watched for a while before heading to the Spanish Steps.  We decided not to throw a coin in the fountain, as we know we are coming back to Rome on our Contiki tour.  Why waste our Euro’s now, we will throw our coin in on the return, with the wish that we will come back again.  Needless to say the Spanish Steps were just as busy.  You could barely see them, there were that many people sitting on them!  This is Chelsey’s first time to Europe, so she learnt the hard way that nothing is for free.  When the guys walking around giving out roses for free, are not actually free when you take one from them.  He got a little upset when she gave the rose back to him, but she now knows how the programme works!

Round 2 for my Rome pasta experience.  Well I knew where NOT to take ChelC!  We walked to the Republic Piazza and found a street café along there that looked quite cute and ‘Italian’.  We ordered a bottle of Lambrusco (which was delicious) pasta (not a microwave meal) and a pizza (which was also delicious) and we shared the whole lot!  We even got a rude Italian waiter to top off the experience!  What a great way to depart Rome and we will see you in 2 weeks when we come back, albeit we won’t be staying in the lap of luxury and in the center of town, but we will be back!

   

AIR TRAVEL FROM LONDON TO ROME

WEATHER:  Leaving London at 5am – 10C / Arriving into Rome at 2pm – 22C

HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY:  Bag underweight again – 22.4kg

BUMMER OF THE DAY: Having to get up so early

WORD OF THE DAY: - always written phonetically – Grazia – thanks in Italian

Early pick up this morning.  I was given the range of between 4.45am-5.15am for the collection time.  There’s always the concern that the transfer won’t turn up that early, but I was down stairs right on 4.45am and he was there waiting for me, which was awesome.  We had one other collection and then my driver drove like a bat out of hell and I am sure got us to Heathrow in record time at 5.55am

I am departing from terminal 5, where all British Airways flights now depart from, and this terminal is amazing.  It is all still new, they had a guy walking around with a weekly ‘newsletter’ pointing out things you can do in the terminal and what the weekly duty free offers are.  The downside is that Wi-Fi is not free here.  The cheapest was 9.95GBP for 24 hours and a lot of the restaurants also don’t offer the service.  Weird, because it is so large, but maybe that is why.

You self-check-in for BA flights, so I did this and went to the bag drop to find out I was 30 minutes too early.  So I sat and booted up the computer and caught up on my latest blog entry.  By the time I finished this, I could drop the bag, which without even knowing I did a Leyton ‘yeah’ fist action as it came in at 22.4kg.  The check-in dude was quite amused.

Security check can be a nightmare, you get the idiots who have to take off half their clothes, get out their lap tops, forget to take off their belt, so they have to go back through, then they forgot about  their liquids bag, so it has to get x-rayed again and the process can be quite lengthy.  I think this is the most frustrating thing with airports, getting all the idiots through the security check points.  Terminal 5 has tried to limit the holdup time, they are well organized and had like 15 stations open, so the wait time was minimal and they have these fancy machines and plenty of the boxes you put your stuff into to keep the process moving.  I do have a pair of scissors in my pencil case, that are below regulation, I got them through St Petersburg and also Helsinki after they were checked accordingly, but London didn’t even pull me up on them.  I think I may start my scissor challenge and see if they can make their way through every airport check I get done.  Let’s see how far they get!

Our flight left from a gate that required a bus transfer to the plane.  I was on the first bus, nearly the last one they squeezed on, so I was the first off and the very first person to walk on the aircraft – I felt very special. The plane was one of those executive ones, the whole plane was leather which special cup holders on your arm rests and once again happy to report nice and roomy.  We were all packed on and tucked in nicely when the captain came onto the pa and reported that there was a security check missing off their report that they had, so this needed to be done, and we had to wait the 60 minutes for this to be done.  So tick tick tick – 60 minutes arrived and it was completed, but when they did this last check, they noticed one of the tyres didn’t look right, so another 30 minutes while they changed the planes tyre and then we were good to go.  All the time we were sitting on the plane!  Being Heathrow, we then had to wait another 20 minutes to find a slot that traffic control could fit us into to be able to get out.  You can literally see the queue of planes waiting for takeoff is a site to see.  So we left nearly 2 hours late, but safety is pretty important, so people shouldn’t really complain right?

2 hours and 40 minutes finds us landing in Rome.  Once again being Non-EU passport holders gets you straight through customs, no line up and the Italian customs seem pretty laid back guys.  The thing of getting through quick is your bags aren’t quite as fast, so it is hurry up and wait scenario.  I just pull my book out and am happy to read till my bag finally surfaces.  I’m in no rush.  I’m still trying to work out how I’m going to get to the hotel.  I did buy a train ticket before I left home, but as my bag is quite hefty and I have an additional bag, I could think of nothing worse trying to shuffle my way around, so I did the easy way out and paid $25 EUR for shared transfer to take me directly to my hotel.  Best money I have spent let me tell you.  FYI a taxi costs 65EUR, the train 17EUR and if you have 6 people or more from 10EUR.

My hotel is amazing.  The St Regis Grand is just that – grand.  This is one of the little splurges I have on the trip, to get ready for my 56 days of Contiki I have coming!  Chelsey arrives tomorrow afternoon, so it will be good to have some company again.  We then head off for our cruise of the Mediterranean for a week.  Ahhhh some sea and sun, the only blot is we have pre-purchased a drinks package, so there may be some Ughhhhhhhhh sea and sun days – but we will wait and see.