Finally all the roads led to Rome

I’m in Rome. Flew from Stansted this afternoon to Roma Ciampino airport. I’ve never flown to Rome before so was pleasantly surprised to feel like we were flying over lots of land which gives you a bit more of an interesting flight. It was pretty smooth and easy journey but it’s been so long since I flew that I was terribly scared and would have asked to stop and get off if only I could. It was however fine!
Getting onto the flight was really the hardest thing – once we got to Ciampino Airport we wandered outside into the warm 6 o’clock sunshine and conveniently found people selling bus tickets to Rome which was great as we had no clue how we’d actually get to Rome and the airport is 15km outside. The bus leaves regularly, takes about 40 minutes and the ticket was only 8 Euros for a return each which seemed very reasonable. We went with Bus Shuttle but right next to our bus was another one run byTerravision and there didn’t seem much difference in the price or anything else.

Italy seems very relaxed after England. People walk slowly and seem to always be in groups chatting especially if they are in any official capacity wearing a uniform!

Of course the minute we drove into Rome we heard the hooting and beeping starting but generally the traffic isn’t as bad as I feared. It’s pretty hard to cross some roads if you’re a pedestrian and there isn’t actually a red light to stop the cars but apart from that it’s not awful. Our bus dropped us off at Stazione Termini which is right in the centre and from there we walked – me dragging my suitcase over the cobbles and kerbs to our apartment on
Via Ciancaleoni – which is tucked away in an old part of the city up some steps in an impossibly Italian ally filled with flower pots and scooters and looking like something straight out of a film. The apartment is lovely – we found it on Trip Advisor and I’d really recommend it. It’s clean, convenient, the host is lovely and it’s a renovated building with parts that date back to Roman times.

It seems we’d been travelling all day and we were pretty shattered but managed to find our local supermarket and stocked up on Italian looking things and came back to our lovely apartment and cooked a meal very similar to the one we’d have cooked in England but somehow it tasted so much better!

Leave a Reply