Buongiorno Italia!

03.01.2012 – Tuesday, Day 15

Today we began the long journey over to Italy from Nice. We caught the 7:26am train to Ventimigila then onto Genova and from there down to Rome where we safely arrived at about 4:45pm.

Thankfully we had allocated seats on this trip, although to our despair the first class carriage on the Ventimigila to Genova leg didn’t have any power going to it so we sat in the dark for a while until we were instructed to move back to a second class carriage. They are much the same anyway.

The view along the coastal road leaving Nice was stunning and we were sad to be leaving… it would have been great to stay an extra couple of nights or maybe one day come back during the summer.

Moving on, we arrived in Rome and walked a short distance (350 meters) to our hotel… Hotel Gioberti which from what we can gather is central to the train station and is surrounded by lots of Pizzarias and shoe shops (my sign of heaven), but is a little rough, and there is not much that the hotel offers. Everyone loves a free breakfast which we managed to get again, but there is no free WiFi and the internet is 7 Euro for one hour! To give you Aussie’s an idea of the prices, we had the traditional Spaghetti Bolognaise for tea plus a salad and a drink all for 8 Euro each… The meal was delicious by the way and well worth the wait, but I’m not so sure about this hotel. We are going to see if we can switch rooms tomorrow for something a bit bigger since Adam can only fit one leg in the shower without smashing into something!! Lol.

We have 5 nights here in Rome so we are hoping to see most things, but we only have two brochures on tours both for a company called Green Line Tours… they look rather expensive and typical so if anyone can recommend something different or can suggest somewhere for us to go visit please do so. We would love to see some of the countryside and smaller local areas rather than just the city and tourist areas. We can use the trains for free here as much as we like.

Grazie Mille, Buonasera.