Musings and Wanderings: June 2015

Tuesday, June 30, 2015

Day One in Rome

It was hot in Rome today.

We landed around 10:30 am, on time despite a late take off from Chicago. The flight was fine, but as I watched several families settle in to business class, I decided I never want to fly coach for a long flight like that again. It would have been a million times better to be laying out flat and sleeping, but no big deal, I travelled half way around the world in a small flying tube, that's a miracle.

The airport in Rome is nice, we didn't check any bags so we were outta there pretty fast. They don't seem very interested at passport control either, not stamp, no chat, nothing.

Here's a little traveller note, it costs the same to take an Uber Black Car from the airport to downtown Rome; around 50 Euros.

We arrived at our hotel, about an hour after we landed, and we were happy to find that our room was ready early. I heard about the hotel, Leon's Place in the NY Times, and it was a good find. The rooms are small, but nice, with a nice bathroom. The closet space is minimal, but it has a balcony. The breakfast buffet is also included, and the food is great and plentiful.

After we dropped off the bags, we set out to find Emma's pizza. This may not have been a great idea. It was a pretty long walk in the heat and we got a little lost. Once we finally found it, we both had an excellent Roman style pizza. The food was great and the prices were very reasonable.

The walk home was a little bit of a death march. We saw some amazing sites, including the coliseum, which we will be touring on Wednesday, but it was still super hot and we didn't have our directions down very well. When we finally got home a cold shower was in order to wash off the plane and 90 degree day stickiness.

We closed it out with a nice dinner at Restaurante La Pentolaccia, a local place that the hotel recommended. The waiters were very nice, they spoke a little english and don't seem to mind feeding Americans, but you should know, everything in Italian restaurants is good so don't ask for suggestions.