Our journey to Rome started off a bit rough to say the least. Up until this point in our travels, I had always been booking the seats for our train journeys, but then I got tired. I felt like it was about time that Luch finally booked our seats, not realising that you can’t book seats on the same day you want to travel. So I had left the website open on the right train and times and Luch and woken up on the day we needed to make it to Rome and booked our seats; or so I thought.
We got onto the busiest train I’ve ever seen just to find that someone else was sitting in our seats. This had happened to us before, so I kindly walked over and told them that they were in the wrong seats. They proceeded to show me completely different seat numbers while I continued to say “yes, but those aren’t these seats”. They could barely speak English, so this made our continuing argument far more complicated than it needed to be.
Eventually they showed us e-reservations for the same seat numbers that we had booked and we all stood around very confused. Luch and I both looked around for a Conductor, but as per the norm, when you need one they are never around. So these incredibly rude people just decided to sit down and take the seats and I walked to stand in the aisle while Luch searched the train for the Conductor.
It took like 20 minutes, until I finally saw him returning with a Conductor in tow and them discussing it with the people in the seats, only to have Luch come out and tell me that it looked like our seats were booked for the wrong date. So, not only had I gotten myself all worked up and angry at people who actually had the right seats after all, but now the train was full and we would have to stand or sit on the stairs where the doors to the train car would open at every stop for over an hour.
I had had enough. I just burst into tears and quite a lot of swear words. I couldn’t believe that the one time I had actually given Luch the responsibility, he had mucked it up. I felt overwhelmed and suddenly exhausted. I was sick of travelling. I just wanted to go home. Before we had gotten on the train, it had been delayed by an hour and a half, so already we had had to stand that length of time and now I would have to carry on standing.
I messaged our Airbnb host and asked if it would be possible to check in early as our train had been delayed and I couldn’t imagine walking around Rome for a few hours after our whole ordeal. He was incredibly rude about it again and said “he would try to be there early”. So all in all the day was getting worse and worse.
At least when we got to Rome, we thought it would be a bit easier. The only problem was, we needed to take a bus to our accommodation and everyone we asked kept telling us to go to a different bus. Eventually we found the right one, but it was super busy yet again and we had to stand with our suitcases at the door.
I wish I could say that our accommodation made up for the terrible morning that we had been having up until that point, but unfortunately I can’t. Our host kept complaining about us being early and him having to rush over there from his other properties. Then he proceeded to talk for 15 minutes about everything that was in the apartment and the many rules of staying. Not only that, but he was so patronizing when explaining how the lock in the door worked only if the key was inserted a specific way. Having unlocked a door before, I was pretty shocked that he wanted us to test it out in front of him like we were idiots.
All I wanted to do was get inside, take a shower and get into bed. It had been a horrible day and things had spiraled out of control. I just needed a break from people in general.
So eventually when our host left, we decided to have a huge fight, because that is what you do when things going terrible on holiday; make them worse. I needed some time alone, so Luch went out to the grocery store and I had the shower that I had been thinking about for hours. We went to bed early that night and hoped that the next day would be better.
The next morning, the sun was shining and we felt stronger once more. We could face Rome and its millions of tourists again. This time we weren’t going to take a bus or a train though. This time, we were going to walk it.
We tried to get to as many sights as we possibly could and I would say that we succeeded. We went to the Colosseum, Circus Maximus, Pantheon, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, The Spanish Steps, The Roman Forum and so many others that I can’t even remember. At least I’ve got the photos. 🙂
We looked up online the best times to go to the Sistine Chapel and realised that I could just spend the afternoon relaxing in our apartment while Luch visited the Vatican by himself. I’d been there twice before, so didn’t mind missing out. It was the first time on our trip that we hadn’t gone to a sight together, but it wasn’t the last time. It actually worked out really well and we both got what we wanted. He got to see the Sistine Chapel and I got to relax on a couch in front of the TV after a hectic morning of sightseeing.
All I’m going to say to end off about Rome is that even though the buses, trams and metro are the cheapest way to get around; they are usually not the most pleasant. We waited over an hour for a bus the one day and it never came, we ended up walking home instead. We also had to take a bus to get back to the train station on our last day in Rome and could barely get on it was so squished. We kept having to get off the bus with our bags every time it stopped to let people off and we were in the way. It was a complete nightmare and some Italian guy still had the gall to complain and swear at us even though we were doing a nice thing getting on and off.
I did love the sunsets over the Tiber River though. Those were magical! 🙂
