It is always a little sad as I leave one place I have quickly grown to love, and yet of course exciting to think that I’ll soon be somewhere new.
Today we basically had a spare day free of any planned activities since the juggling from the closed Colosseum meant that we had missed going to Naples and Pompeii. Naples couldn’t have been an option today as there was no chance we would be back in time to make our evening flight to Paris. So today was an opportunity to sleep in and just take it easy. And today we did just that.
After our 10:00AM checkout, we headed off to Termini station to drop off our luggage. Seven weeks we’d travelled through Europe without any address tags on our luggage, but now I was feeling that my luck had run out, and I had best find some before we left our luggage in the left luggage.
There are a lot of shops at Termini. Two levels of shops. The lower level included a McDonalds alongside part of the old Servian wall. I just love finding these old city walls, and this one is from the 4th Century BC. History plus.
But continuing on the search for luggage tags; most shops if they even understood what I was asking for did not have the damn things. Not even the sure bet bag shop. There was even a full on supermarket down here where at least I found a combination luggage lock so we could lock up the hand luggage, but alas no tags.
In the end I gave up and checked our bags in tagless and headed back upstairs. I bought our tickets for the airport train ride this evening, despite those pesky “ticket helpers”, and then headed off down the streets of Rome looking for somewhere to plonk and relax. The simple prerequisites being drinks and shade.
We sat down at a nearby restaurant but after 10 minutes without service, gave up and moved on. We decided to walk to Trevi Fountain again, especially as I hadn’t yet tossed my obligatory coins in. Half way there, wouldn’t you know it, we came across another fountain. Rome is the city of fountains.
 |
| I have absolutely no idea... |
 |
| Trevi Fountain fenced off. Maybe they were collecting the coins... |
Crowds still encircling the fountain didn’t stop me from throwing my coins in over my shoulder, but the fence almost led to tragedy. Throwing the coins high enough to clear the top of the fence, they just barely managed to make it past the edge of the fountain and into the clear aquamarine. Good, I’ll be back :-)
Our last Italian gelato was really, really good; making up for the average pizza (the carbonara was pretty good though), and thankfully I managed to finish it off before it melted, despite the temperature up in the very high 20’s.
The walk back to the station was interspersed with lots of window shopping and searching for some little souvenirs. I was very happy to find a wallet exactly like the one I’d lost a couple days before, and as an added bonus, it was 5 euro cheaper and was stamped with Firenze! Souvenir gift shopping however wasn’t so successful. But we did find some baggage tags!
 |
| Part of the Servian wall, in McDonalds at Termini |
Boarding the plane did have a little excitement though, well not literally excitement, I mean we are sitting in an airport here, for hours…
EasyJet can be very strict about their luggage guidelines, and I do suppose that’s fair; they are every explicit about the size of carry on and they are cheap. But the queue we were in had a full on rules Nazi as the gatekeeper. Two people in front of us got caught out: one with a bag just barely over the size limits, which the air stewardess would not bend on at all, and another carrying two bags; clearly one more than the stated allowance, even if it was just a handbag. Despite much arguing, and then struggling she managed to get the handbag into her other bag and was then allowed through. Michelle had the same restriction, and thankfully was also able to get her handbag into her carryon bag, which was of course taken straight back out once through the gate and on the plane.
And then we were at Charles De Gaulle, getting off the plane. Our host must have misunderstood our arrival time thinking it was quite late in the evening, and asked us to get the taxi to our apartment in Montmartre. The lady meeting us supposedly couldn’t stay too late in the city. The internet said train and taxi were about the same travel time, but train would have also involved walking, so we resigned ourselves to paying a bit extra for the taxi with the benefit of not having to drag our luggage through the streets and believing we would be there reasonably quickly.
Believing incorrectly, as it turned out. Again, we were caught out. This time by the bloody G7 summit. The well-loved president of France had blocked off a number of roads and caused extremely severe traffic congestion. Our taxi driver had very little English, and I had pretty much negligible French and so he struggled to communicate this to us. He was saying "reign", and I’m looking at the clear blue sky thinking what?, it isn’t going to rain???? But it was pretty clear of the love (not) he held for Francois. Anyway, the taxi driver had a good chuckle at my “oh là là”.
So the freeway was a very long crawl, with Sacré Cœur visible all too far in the distance. Not only was our trip taking far longer than any train ride and walking, but the trip also cost us 65 Euro! Stupid president. And our host wasn’t at the apartment anyway, and was surprised to find us there so early when we called. Anyway, yay!! Paris!!! Wow.
Montmartre is just beautiful. We dined at the nearby restaurant La Poutre, where I ordered the steak frites. The steak was not too bad, a little on the thin side, however beautifully seasoned. The chips on the other hand were very bleh. I really need to get a good quality and good value meal soon, especially since I’m in Paris!
 |
| Place du Tertre |
 |
| Place du Tertre |
Travel days mean less photos, and today was no exception...
No comments:
Post a Comment