Musings on Rome

We will begin with the pros and cons of cheap flights in Europe:

Pros

• It's cheap

Cons

• The flight will be delayed (nothing unusual)
• The seats are smaller than Virgin/Jetstar planes
• A crazy woman will begin an argument with flight attendants that will last for at least 10 minutes. During this time the passengers will begin abusing her. She will abuse them in return and the person sitting next to you will jump up as if she is about to biff her (but she doesn't)
• That is eventually resolved and is immediately followed by an announcement that the plane will take off in approximately 20 minutes
• The plane takes off in approximately 30 minutes, after which you already have cramps
• Once the plane is in the air, it appears that the engine switches off and you are hanging in the air, at which time you truly believe you are about to die. Everyone looks at one another but no one says anything
• Engine then kicks in again and you continue.
• The plane lands and 50% of passengers break into spontaneous applause
• You get into the airport and go to the appropriate luggage belt, only to wait an hour and a half and two subsequent flights until your luggage finally comes out.

This was our introduction to Italy, and I'm happy to say things have become moderately better. For instance, when we arrived at our hotel, we were pleased to find that not only was it actually very close to the train station, but the staff lived up to the hotel's name, "Welcome Residences", and were pleasingly if not slightly cornily friendly and welcoming.

Our Lonely Planet guide warned us that Italy is not the most organised and streamlined of places, and this has proven to be true. The traffic is completely insane and the rules even less enforced than in France and Spain. There are very few pedestrian crossings, and those that exist are only observed by drivers if they feel like it. After hesitating and then running across the road in a panic for a while, we've quickly learned that the only way to survive is to look down and walk across in front of oncoming traffic.

Last night we had a quiet dinner at a pizza place around the corner and a lovely bottle of Chianti and had an early night after what ended up being 7 hours of travel (despite the 1 and a half hour flight). A big positive about this place is that literally everyone speaks English. I was getting all fired up about using my high school Italian and was even practising different phrases on the plane, but was a little disappointed to find that even when we greet someone in Italian, they will answer in English (probably due to my poor pronunciation).

Today begun with a decidedly poor breakfast at the hotel (stale croissants, fake "juice", a huge pile of bread but no toaster, and yoghurt with a higher percentage of sugar than yoghurt), did some laundry, sorted our train tickets for the next few weeks (a mission in itself) and then we headed straight to the Colosseum. The line was enormous, and after fending off hundreds of American people trying to talk us into taking the guided tour with them in return for an extra 10 euros and skipping the line, we soon remembered that we actually had no cash. After asking someone if we could use credit card and finding out we could not, we left and went to the Roman Forum, which was free and quite amazing, with architecture from pre BC.

We then took a massive hike to the Vatican, where we finally found an ATM, only to find that none of them were available for cash withdrawal (!?). There were heaps of police around and then we realised that today is 11 September. We walked up to the entrance and took a few photos, but had no wish to line up behind the hundreds of people waiting to go into the Basilica, so we left.

After our fourth attempt at withdrawing cash from different ATMS, we finally found one that would give us money, so we immediately purchased due bloody big birras and relaxed for half an hour. We then set out again, picked up another four beers from the supermercato and settled in front of the Fontana di Trevi and drank all of them while drinking in the view. It was beautiful, 500 thousand tourists aside.

We finally got back to our hotel and chilled out for a while before showering and heading out for another dinner close by, this time rigatoni carbonara and linguine alla vongole...yum. Plus a bottle of Chianti (inferior to last night's, but nevertheless drinkable).

Tomorrow we're going on a day trip to Amalfi, which I can't wait for, followed by one more day in Rome, then onto Florence.