Roma… the disappointing city.

If you had asked me what city I was most looking forward to on our trip, in a heartbeat I would have responded: ROME.  Rome has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember, and we are going to spend an entire week there.  I won’t lie, growing up movies such as The Lizzie McGuire Movie  and When in Rome definitely played into my wanting to visit Rome, but I was also vastly interested in the rich history of the city as well.

Our trip down to Rome from Venice began with a long, HOT, train ride.  Italian trains cannot compare to German and Austrian trains and on a 7.5 hour train ride, we were wishing for the comforts of other trains.  However, it only cost us 17 Euros to get to Rome, so that was a plus.  We were sitting by two young men who made me very uncomfortable our entire journey.  They were foreigners as well, and upon arrival in Rome, they even asked for my friends number and tried to figure out public transport with us/ asking us question after question.  Maybe I’ve watched one to many films such as Taken.  Eventually, after feeling completely overwhelmed by them, we opted to grab a Cab and head to our Air BnB (which came with a balcony and an outdoor oven for wood fired pizzas– amazing!).

Well, we got in our Cab, and our driver had NO idea where we were asking him to take us.  He finally asked another cabbie for directions, and off we went.  When we arrived, our driver said “I think it’s right over there….” and sent us packing.  We walked up to the complex, buzzed the apartment and were brought up by a quaint, old Italian gentleman named Mr. Copertino.  As Mr. Copertino showed us around the apartment, we walked into the bathroom to find the bathroom floor was flooded.  Mr. Copertino threw his hands in the air, yelled out “moment” and rushed off, coming back moments later with rags to clean up the mess.  As it turned out, the bidet was left on, which caused the flooding.  Mr. Copertino left us to get settled, and after getting our bearings, we headed out to find a grocery store so we could make dinner, and a Metro station so we would know the public transportation system for our full day of sightseeing the following day.

We found a convenience store, but were unsuccessful in finding a Metro station.  We headed back to our apartment, and started cooking dinner.  Midway through cooking our tortellini and veggies, our power went out.  It came back on, but continued flickering off and on throughout the evening.  We even had to find Mr. Copertino to try and resolve the situation.  We finally gave up on our evening, and headed to bed, hoping that our morning would start off on the right foot.

Was this really the Rome I’d dreamed about for years?!