Italy #4: Bonjourno, Italia!

Foreword: When in Rome, do as the Romans do. So I will use the Italian names for places. Only in the titles of the blogs though, not in the body. The other reason for using Italian names is that the language is musical to hear, due to the vowel ending sound to most words and also the way they say it. Even “Ferrari” sounds better when pronounced by an Italian. Enough said, let’s get started.

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We’d planned to visit Italy in December ’23 but didn’t because the visa came just a day before the journey. Even though we’d applied it for many, many weeks in advance. We didn’t have the stomach to wait for the visa until that close to the trip (we’d also lose a lot if we cancelled that late). The next time, we applied for a French visa which came so much faster and went to France, Netherlands and Austria last year. We used that same visa for the Italy trip this year.

 

I’ve never cleared immigration as quickly as we did in Rome! They just check for a valid visa and don’t ask for return tickets or hotel bookings or any questions. Such a pleasant contrast to German immigration the previous year.

 

Since Rome is notorious for robbery and pickpockets at tourist spots, and we had landed at night, my wife had booked a limo to take to the hotel. It turned out to be a Mercedes, and I loved the ride to the hotel. On the way, we pointed out the Colosseum to my 13 yo daughter. No, no, said our driver, that’s just a model in front of a theatre! He then took a slight detour to show us the real Colosseum. A great ride made even better by this gesture.

 

Our hotel was in the center of the city, walking distance from pretty much all the tourist haunts of Rome. It didn’t have a breakfast area, instead they stashed the mini-fridge with an unimaginable variety of eateries.

 

Hotel rooms world over have ugly paintings. Not this one. It didn’t have any paintings on the wall. Instead, it had these. Really, no kidding. All lost on my daughter though (top-center), who was busy on her phone…



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