Friday, May 25, 2007

Rome-antic Weekend Day I


Up at 3:30 this morning, TomTom led us straight to the offsite parking for Gatwick airport, and we took a shuttle straight to the south terminal. Check in was relatively painless, as was security, and at 6:20 we were boarding the easyJet airbus flight EZY5253. As an airbus, there is no assigned seating, and we certainly didn’t pay to get on earlier, but for whatever reason when we did get on the very front seats were still vacant, so we got pretty much the best seats on the plane, with all the leg room we could use. Much to Kelly's delight, the flight attendant allowed her into the cockpit to meet the pilots, something of a rarity in today's world of air terror.
The 2 hour flight went by way too slowly, even though we slept a little, and with nothing to read we amused ourselves by thumb wrestling the whole time we were over the Alps. We landed just around 10am local time. The door right beside us was opened for our departure, and we were immediately struck by a wall of heat. We went down the stairs and across the tarmac, quickly whizzing through security, and waited for our one bag to come through. Our first glimpse into the mediteranean psyche occurred whilst trying to depart the Arrivals lounge. While the British tourists all queued as usual, people from other parts of Europe saw it as a free for all and just mowed through.
We had totally budgeted for a EU30 taxi ride, but we saw a sign for a bus service for EU6 each straight to the city centre and, once again, fiscal sensiblity won out over Kelly's hatred of buses. We needn't have worried, we were on a good luck streak seat wise, and yet again got the best seat on the bus, right in the front so we can see everything.
We drove out of the airport at 11am, and saw immediately the maniacal way Italians drive. Christian joked that we would probably see an accident at some point, and wouldn't you know it not 6 minutes later a truck in front of us knocked into the car in front of him, and didn't bother to move even though he was blocking ALL traffic behind him. He moved about 10 minutes later, and we continued into the heart of the city. Amused and bewildered, we watched a woman ahead of us park her car in the middle of the road, put her hazzard lights on, and got out to look at shoes in a shop window! When in Rome.
Arriving at the city centre, we fired up the TomTom which lead us straight to our hotel about a 15 minute walk away. We did stop enroute at a cute grocery store where we picked up beverage, coffee yogurt (we tend to eat it on all trips to Europe, for some reason) and this groovy bread with whole olives baked in it. Shoving that in our faces, we checked into our hotel, dropped our stuff in room 518, and headed out to the cute restaurant the manager recommended.
It was authentic, which was made apparent by the lack of any hint of an English speaking person. We were sat by the window, and were immediately given a basket of bread, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Christian recommended getting something different from our ordinary fair, but we ended up with Linguini with clams and spagetti and meatballs anyway. Superb. (...not complete)

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