Day One - Getting the lay of the land

Our flight into Fiumicino was pretty uneventful. On the plane I opted for the the lasagna at dinner which I later regretted. I couldn't wait a couple of more hours for the real thing? When we landed, we managed to get into the fastest moving (and when I say fastest, I mean moving at actual snail pace in comparison to the other lines which weren't moving at all) line at passport control, but our momentum was quickly thwarted when we arrived at the baggage carousel. It took an absurdly long amount of time to retrieve our baggage. But then I breathed and remembered we were in Italy, and poof! The bags appeared!

Once of the services our hotel provided, which I actually considered pretty convenient, was the ability to book a car service from the airport to the hotel for a flat rate of 50 euro. From what I had read, cabs from the airport would have run us about 40 euro, but would also come with the anticipation of "are they going to rip us off?", and "are we going the right way", etc. Better safe than sorry, and figuring on our state of mind after an overnight flight of 8 hours, I went with the extravagance of the car service. And once we completely cleared customs, our car service was waiting with a sign that said "Yuliana Wurzburger". Close enough! Andiamo!

We arrived at the hotel at around 9:30, and were told that not only could we still partake in the continental breakfast, but our room was ready! Excitedly, and rather famished, we dropped our bags off in the room and ran back downstairs for breakfast. There was a definite Italian barrier that I had stupidly forgotten to anticipate and when the waitress asked what kind of coffee I wanted, I managed to get across that I wanted a cappuccino. At least that was a word I knew she would know. The rest of my first Italian breakfast consisted of a piece of rustic Italian bread, a slice of salami, cheese, and an egg. Yummmmmm...




After breakfast we headed back upstairs to get cleaned up and we headed out to meet up with my cousin. For lack of a better plan at that exact moment, we decided to find a money exchange so that I could change some of my dollars to euros. The closest one was by the Pantheon, so we headed over.

Our hotel was pretty much around the corner from my cousin's apartment, and both were in Trastevere. Trastevere was a part of Rome that I had not toured on my previous visit, and I must say, it is now my favorite part of Rome. Trastevere sits on the left bank of the Tiber, so it had a very local feel to it. There were practically no tourists, and was chock full of little trattorias and cafes. Around every corner and down every alley was a new surprise just waiting to be found if you knew where to look. That was what I liked about Trastevere. It wasn't all out there for someone to skim over and absorb in 5 minutes. You had to really walk the cobblestone streets and visit the little shops and cafes to really get the flavor the the neighborhood. You had to make the time.

Case in point, we stopped into a neighborhood deli on the way back from exchanging money. They had all sorts of delicacies, but we stuck with the pizza on the first try. As we were sitting there enjoying the pizza, we noticed a couple of men walk into the establishment. One of the men had an ear piece, and the other was definitely packing heat. The other was an extremely old man. Since they were all in plain clothes, we kind of shrugged everything off until one of the owners started making quite a fuss. We made Stacey ask what the ruckus was all about and it turns out the old man was a previous president of Italy, Oscar Luigi Scalfaro. At the time we had no idea who he was, but turns out he is the oldest living Italian president. Pretty cool!

Since Trastevere is not as centrally located as other neighborhoods in Rome, public transportation quickly becomes your friend. And its also quite easy to cheat the system as we came to find. Usually when you take public transportation in Rome, you have to visit one of the Tabacchi stores to get a ticket/pass and then you validate it on the bus or tram by swiping it through the machine, only... no one ever checks if you actually swipe. Not the most ethical thing to do, but it definitely helped save a couple of euro here and there! After our pizza lunch, we decided to utilize the fine free public transportation, and headed over to the Villa Borghese where we heard you could rent bicycles and ride around the park. Maybe some endorphins would keep us going!
This turned out to be a great idea as it was a relatively cheap activity (4 euro for an hour), and the park surrounding the villa was quite beautiful and rather peaceful.




We even got some cardio worked in! No doubt we were tired by the end of things, but it definitely made room for our pasta dinner at a local place back in Trastevere. After a plate of Pasta Carbonara, and a glass of the house red, it was sweet dreams for us as we had made it through our first day!