Italy Day 7: Venice to Rome

We woke up early in the morning and, after breakfast, headed to the Santa Lucia train station to go back to Rome.

The Italian train system has some strange seat numbering. When making reservations, I had asked for seats together and the numbers were consecutive. But the seats were not really together. There were four seats, two on each side of the aisle, facing four other seats. Instead of having three seats together on one side of the aisle, however, we had three seats that were diagonal from each other. So two two diagonal seats on one side of the aisle and one seat on the other side. That was odd, but there was a nice South African couple there who were also split on both sides of the aisle and we switched seats.

In about four and a half hours, we were in Rome. We went to Hotel Amalfi and checked in. After lunch, we decided to do some sightseeing. We took the metro to Spagna and walked to Ara Pacis Augustae. The ticketperson there was really surprised that we wanted three audio sets, but Michelle did want her own.

It was a hot day, the hottest during our trip and Michelle wanted to get into the water fountain just outside Ara Pacis when we went back outside. After she had cooled down in the water, we walked around looking at the Mausoleum of Augustus, which is not open to tourists. We also looked at every church in the neighborhood.

Then we decided to head south. Passing by the Chamber of Deputies and Pantheon, we stopped for some gelato. We wandered around Campo dei Fiori and Piazza Farnese and on Via Giulia.

As we stood in the long line at the popular pizza restaurant, Da Baffetto, we realized a mistake: We were almost out of cash and the restaurant didn’t accept credit cards. Instead of looking for an ATM, we decided to go to Da Sergio instead. Their pasta was good, but the waiter didn’t know any English, so communication was a bit difficult.

The next day, we took the train to the airport. There we realized that our flight was not from Terminal C, the main terminal for international flights, but from Terminal 2, for which we had to take a bus in front of Terminal C as it wasn’t within walking distance. That terminal looked like it was for all US-bound flights. At first, we had to go through security counters and then check in at the airline counters. Finally, after checking in, we realized that our gate at Terminal 2 didn’t have any aircraft. Instead, we got on a bus and went to the plane which was parked next to Terminal C. It was an odd situation and reminded me of Pakistan and other strange places.

Ten hours later, we were back in Atlanta and home.

Michelle has been saying since we returned that she wants to go back to Italy when she’s 10 years old. Sometimes, she even wants to go live in Italy and eat gelato every day.

Photographs from Venice and Rome are below the fold on Google Maps.

First, Venice:

Then, Rome: