Italy trip – Arrival in Rome!
by aaron on Oct.23, 2013, under France
Sorry readers out there for not posting more often! Since I have such a steel trap, I’ll definitely just retroactively describe what’s been going on for the past month or so. Don’t worry!
Anyway, Deanna and I have begun our exciting trip to Italy! The internet isn’t too great here, so I will just add the text for now – the photos will come later.
Our trip began on the morning of October 22. We woke up, did last-minute packing, then headed out from our room in MontFerrand. We got some pastries from the local boulangerie on our way to Jardiland ( http://www.jardiland.com/ ), the spot where we had agreed to meet with Jeff, the driver for our “covoiturage” to Lyon. It was a dark and windy morning, and after sitting on the bench waiting for Jeff for about a half hour, I decided that I wanted to bring my sweatshirt along on the trip in case it was going to be cold. So I ran back to the room in MontFerrand, grabbed the sweatshirt and some other important papers, and ran back to Jardiland. It was only 8 or so at that point, and Jeff wasn’t supposed to show up until 8:10, so we weren’t too worried. Jeff ended up being a bit late, but we found him nonetheless. Apparently another woman was traveling with us, so we all introduced ourselves. Deanna and I sat in the back while the woman sat in the front with Jeff. In hindsight, this setup might not have been ideal, because apart from the first 30 or so minutes, the front became the “French area” and the back became the “English area”. I didn’t want it to happen that way, but once they started talking they never really made much of an effort to include us. I listened for quite a bit of their conversation. I remember that they were talking about underage drinking and how they thought it was a growing problem in France. Anyway, the trip was rated as taking about three and a half hours, but it ended up being maybe one and a half or two. After arriving in Lyon, Deanna and I got our grub on at Mezzo di Pasta, a French attempt at Italian pasta (like Noodles & Company in America). We waited a while before deciding to finally buy the train tickets to go to the airport (it was only 12:00 at this point and our flight wasn’t until 3:20). The train tickets were 12.50 euro each! Seemed like a ripoff…
We did all the normal airport stuff and made our way to the gate. It was only 12:40 or so at this point and the entire gate was deserted. So Deanna napped while I played some Plants vs. Zombies for about 30 minutes. Then we bided our time until we could board the plane at 3:00.
The plane ride was mainly normal, although I would say that the view was gorgeous as usual. The in-flight instructions were interesting because the crew was all clearly French, but most things were broadcasted in both English and French. Sometimes in Italian also. We landed in Rome right on time, somewhere around 5:00.
After making our way into Rome airport, I walked up to a man at a Tourist counter to ask him, in Italian, where we could find the bathrooms. He pointed us down the hallway, to the left. I was very satisfied that he understood me. The classes had helped me somewhat, apparently. After that, we bought the Rome Passes and tickets for the bus to Termini station. The bus ride was ok apart from a screaming child in front of us (whom the parents did not even seem to try to calm…). Deanna and I were surprised to see how shabby the outskirts of Rome were. There were dumps, shantytowns, and dilapidated buildings galore. I suppose all that makes sense though.
After arriving in Termini station, we were baffled as to our next course of action. My French sim card was only valid until the end of the day, and we needed a phone in the next few days to call our hosts and to call the next driver for the covoiturage we were taking from Rome to Florence. We wandered around the station for a while hoping to find a 3, an Italian phone carrier like Verizon, because we knew they were offering a nice deal, but to no avail. We stopped in a cybercafe and paid for 15 minutes of internet to search for the store, but even after going to one of the “supposed” locations in Termini station, it was nowhere to be found. We finally settled on Wind, another Italian phone carrier. We stood in line for about 45 minutes to finally be helped by one of the Italian cashiers. I spouted out all the info I could think of and asked for advice about what we should do (in Italian). The cashier ended up recommending a certain package to us that seemed like a deal, so we took it. Essentially, we paid 20 euro for a sim card, 250 minutes, 250 sms, and 2gb of data for a month. I thought that sounded like plenty, and the data especially was enticing since I really wanted a reliable way to have a good map of Rome on hand at all times. There was some trouble activating the sim card, finding the pin code for it, and getting the data to work, but by the next morning we had finally gotten it to work. After following the map we had taken a picture of back to the cybercafe, we made our way to the host’s apartment on Via dei Latini.
We were shocked by how big the place was! Essentially, the host Caterina is renting us an empty apartment for the next few days! Crazy. After dropping our stuff off, I collapsed into bed and fell to sleep almost immediately. Deanna was kept up by the ambient noise and by the neighboring apartments (because some tenants were talking almost right outside our place).
And thus ends our first day in Italia!
