So, it's Friday and the 4th of July. However, not so much here. No mention of it on TV or by anyone. Oh well, when you're on sabbatical, everyday is a holiday. We leave early Friday morning and get a ride from my wife's cousin's husband. He is nice enough to give us a ride into Munich to the main train station. He has a very nice BMW 5 series which is very fast. On our drive to Munich we hit speeds of nearly 200 kilometers per hour (over 120 miles per hour). Lots of very nice cars in the Munich area. The amazing thing too is that we were passed by even faster cars. Very scary !!! We make it to the main train station safely and board our train to Rome. The train is an older type, but still very comfortable. Like I mentioned earlier, the Eurail pass entitles us to ride in the 1st class compartment. The trains look something like this.
One important thing I learned before coming to Europe is that it is very importat to have a seat reservation when traveling in Italy. The trains in Italy, I would later learn, are very well used and can be crowded. The seat reservation is the only guarantee of a seat. Your train ticket only guarantees you entry to the train, but no guarantee of a seat. This would become an issue for us. But, please let me continue.
The train ride to Rome was scheduled to be 10 hours and 46 minutes. I had the Eurail ticket and I made the seat reservation through the internet. I was led to believe that the train was a direct train to Rome (meaning that I would not need to change trains). I was a little concerned when I boarded in Munich and I saw that the information board said the train was going to Rimini. At first I wasn't sure where Rimini was, but after checking my Italy map, I discovered that it was on the east coast of Italy, a bit south east of Bologna, and unfortunately nowhere near Rome. After checking with our conductor, we learned that we needed to change trains in Bologna. Unfortunately, he was not sure what the connecting train would be when we arrived into Bologna, but he told us to check with his Italian counterpart when the train got into Italy. So off we went. One interesting thing about the train, was that it was an Italian vehicle (a trenitalia) however while we were in Germany it would be driven and manned by a German crew. Once we crossed into Austria, then the Austrian crew came aboard, and Italians when we crossed into Italy. Each crew had to check our tickets and punch them with their stampers. It seemed a bit inefficient, but I guess it gave them something to do.
Somewhere in Italy, one conductor came to us and looked at our ticket and said in very broken English, "NO ROMA, NO ROMA, RIMINI". We explained that we knew that the train was going to Rimini and he said poorly that we had to change in Bologna for another train to Rome. However he didn't know what the train would be. Luckily, when we got closer to Bologna, another conductor came aboard, looked at our tickets and told us the train we needed to catch. However it would be arriving only a few minutes after we got to Bologna, so we needed to hurry. We were fortunate that another person in our compartment (who fortunately spoke English very well) said that she was going to Rome as well and would be catching that same train. So we decided to follow her when we got into Bologna.
When we arrived at Bologna about 7 hours after we left Munich, we made a mad dash across the train station to get to the correct track for the Rome train. It was very hot and we were tired and had to lug all our bags. The next problem is that our seat reservations only mentioned the train number of the first train, but made no mention of this next train. There was good news and bad news, the good news was that the train was one of the Eurostar Italia trains (these are very high speed, very modern trains, much like the ICE trains in Germany.) The bad news was that our seat reservations were no good for this train. So this meant that we had to stand, the whole way from Bologna to Rome. It was only two stops to Rome, but it was a three hour ride. We found a spot near the toilets, in the area where the train cars connect, where we could stand and keep our luggage. Shortly into the ride, we decided to sit on the floor. Needless to say, the family was not very please about this, especially my eldest daughter. But unfortunately, we had no choice. Lucklily the train was fast and we got into Rome even earlier that I originally thought we would. So we arrived around 8PM in Rome Termini station. Total train travel time was about 10 hours.
Rome was warm, and very lively, and we were about 3 miles from the hotel, which was in the Trastevere neighborhood, which is on the other side of the Tiber River. So we hopped a cab. Fortunately, the cab driver was very friendly, and spoke a bit of English. The ride was absolutely insane. I would strongly suggest that no American ever attempt driving in Rome. It is complete chaos, and like a giant game of chicken. The roads have no lines, the number of lanes of traffic depend on the widths of the autos on the road. Cars are constantly drifting across the road. Not to mention pedestrians on suicide runs across the road, and countless moped, and small motorcycles buzzing around like a swarm of bees, make every ride like your last. However, the Roman drivers do seem to have some extra sense that allows them to avoid accidents. I didn't see a single one while I was there. Our driver pointed out the sights, while talking to his girlfriend on his cellphone, and cut into the opposite lanes of traffic more that once, including a block or two down a lane reserved for street cars with some of the street cars heading right at us. However, we got our first glimpses of the Coliseum and St. Peters, so at that point, Rome became almost magical, and we slowly started to enjoy ourselves.
Trastevere, is the artsy, residential section of Rome, full of tiny, winding alleys. It is filled with small shops, boutiques, restaurants, and studios. The taxi driver was only able to get us to with a block or two of the hotel because of the maze of alleyways, some of which would be impossible for a car to enter. We found our hotel and checked in. I asked the woman at the reception if she could recommend a nice place where we could get a pizza or something that wasn't too far away. She recommended a pizzeria named Per Unto, which turned our to be a terrific restaurant. We ate there every night during our stay in Rome. We all had different pizzas, (the kids usually chose the pizza margarita every night) and a liter of red wine and two liters of bottled water, and so we slowly relaxed and had a good time. After dinner, we strolled into the piazza and listened to one of the street performers, and had gelatos from a place called Blue Ice. After a long day, we headed back to the hotel and had a good night sleep.
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