04-16 Rome "Today was not a good day"

04-16

Rome, Italy
"Today was not a good day"

Wheather: Showers, light rain, avg temp 13c

A combination of exhaustion, frustration with the Italian train system, queues, a recently deceased pope and a long night on a train to France meant that this was not a good day for us.

The plan was to catch a train to Rome, see the sights, catch an overnight to Paris, then from Paris head to Lyon (amazingly this was quicker than a direct route because of the TGV's speed). Firstly, catching a train in Italy is not the pleasant experience we had in Germany. 90% of the trains we caught were late, albeit sometimes 5 minutes late but still late (we missed a connecting bus); they were not as clean or comfortable; every train had to be booked (difficult since our Italian sucked and you have to arrive early because of queues where as in Germany no booking was necessary) and there is the added cost of a booking fee; illogical things like at Bologna there are two platform 4's; unable to show platform numbers for trains that will depart in 5 minutes; we even were able to book a seat on a train 4 minutes before schedule departure that was then cancelled (surely you know the train is to be cancelled 4 minutes before the train leaves). Anyway, after a long wait at a the reservation queue the overnight to Paris was booked out so after a regroup and another long wait in the queue we got a seat on an overnight train to Nice - the details I won't go into but I don'tthink we will be doing that again... It left at 23:00 so it gave us time to see the sights of Roma (so far we had spent 3 hours in Roma and had only seen the inside of the train station). We visited theTrevi fountain where I threw a coin over my shoulder and made a wishand opted not to throw another one in to guarentee my return (I read later that I had it the wrong way round - the first coin is to returnand the second coin is the wish. Agast I almost went back to the fountain to fish it out!) Plodded on to the colesseum and the roman ruins and the patheon and the plazza where all the painters were (haveto look up the name for that as well!) except all the artists were selling the same prints we saw in Florence. "Lady, lady a pretty painting. Special price for you". Did not quite make it to St Peters my bad ankle had flared up again so hobbled back to the train. Caught the overnight train to Nice - caio Italy!