Creative Musings

For those who don't know, my sister and brother-in-law came to visit me! They flew into Rome, so Sasha, Emma and I took the train down to meet them. I have managed to make it this far without experiencing a problem with the transportation system and bad customer service (as they are known for here.) Well, Sasha and I bought our train tickets together on Wednesday, asking for a ticket Friday afternoon and returning Sunday evening. The man at the ticket counter told us our separate totals, and then proceeded to charge the entire total to my credit card. They're not very keen on the splitting bills thing here. We gave all our train info to Emma so she could buy her tickets Thursday and could hopefully be sitting near us. When Friday came around and we met at the train station, we noticed about 20 minutes before our train was to leave that Emma and Sasha had the same seat. Then I saw that the date on Emma's ticket was a different date and said "Oh no! Your ticket is for tomorrow!" But Emma looked at mine and said "Yours was for yesterday!" So, the man at the ticket counter sold us tickets for Thursday's train, when I specifically asked for Friday. At the point we were feeling panicked and found the first information person we could find and the woman promptly told me that since it was more than 3 hours after the departure of the train that we had tickets for, there was nothing they could do and we needed to buy new tickets. Since our train was leaving so soon, we just bought new tickets. Needless to say, we were not happy.

We arrived in Rome just fine and ended up running into Ben & Marianne on the street a few blocks from our B & B. After we carried our bags up 4 flights of stairs (instead of using the birdcage elevator) we relaxed for a few minutes, and then headed out to wander and find dinner. Our B & B has a fantastic location, about 4 blocks from the Coliseum! For the rest of the evening we just made our way over to the neighborhood of Trastevere, where I knew of a great place to get Pizza, which did not disappoint. I ordered my favorite, which is a pizza with a white Gorgonzola cheese sauce (no red sauce whatsoever) with thin apple slices on top. Sasha ordered the same and she loved it. So if you're ever in Trastevere, check out Pizzaria Ivo, near the church of Santa Maria in Trastevere on via San Francesco a Ripa.

Check out my photo album from our first evening in Roma.

Labels: Coliseum, Rome, Trastevere