Day 4 (Tues. Nov. 13, Umbria) Umbria Today we rented a car at Termini, the big train station in Roma. I always thought Termini was named because it was the end of all the train lines, but it’s apparently named after the ancient baths nearby. Berck, being a better than average American, had made a Thrifty car rental; they were indeed more thrifty than the discount he got with Avis or Hertz. It took about an hour for the clerk to go through all the paperwork. This was after our disastrous discovery that I hadn’t packed the maps of Italy…
Day 3 (Mon., Nov. 12, Roma) All museums closed On Mondays all of the museums in Italy close. A lot of restaurants close too. We hadn’t intended to stay in Rome an extra day, but all the flights out on Sunday were pretty full while the ones on Monday were relatively empty. That extended our vacation by a day, and we decided to spend it in Roma rather than Milano. Foro Romano Fortunately, you can still walk around the Forum. Berck had already spent untold hours there and not by choice. While I could have spent hours staring at foundations…
Day 2 (Sun., Nov. 11, Roma) Hostel Allessandro Downtown The hostel gave us a double for 50 Euros a night, not bad in a city where the dollar is every day losing value and whose inflation has been checked by Germany’s central bank (as near as we can tell, in any case). The clerk took our passports to fill in the information she needed as required by the Italian police, as I’d read in my guidebook, and we stowed our sacks since our room wasn’t ready yet. Then we headed off for our first Italian adventure. Pantheon I’d been to…
Day 1 (Nov. 10, travel) It started out pretty much as planned, the way most trips (even those with our lack of planning) do. We got up around 4am in order to be at the Denver airport around 5:30am for our 7am flight. The TSA decided that Berck’s passport was fake, so he demanded to speak to a supervisor, who agreed that his passport was, indeed, fake. The problem seemed to have to do with the fact that the picture was not perfectly centered in its square. Berck finally managed to convince them to ignore the passport (which he’d only…
The on again off again trip is on again. I’m going to be really disappointed if something happens and we don’t make it. I’ve spent more effort planning this trip than I did my entire couple of months wandering around with a backpack and eurail pass. The “plan” is to leave tomorrow morning from Denver, getting to Rome Sunday morning. We’ll find a place to stay for 2 nights in the city. Since I lived in Rome and Jonah’s been there before, we don’t have to do most of the compulsory tourist stuff. I’ve got reservations to take Jonah to…