Day 37 Florence - Rome:

Today we leave Florence and make our final train journey to our final destination, Rome. The day starts with me getting out of bed to see the kids dressed and giving the place a bit of a clean up. They have also made themselves a platter of goodies and they are tucking in. Good onya kids. We need to pack again today and one thing is for sure, this is never a fun exercise. It’s getting harder and harder to fit all our gear into the available luggage space. We get that done around 10 but we don’t need to be out of the apartment until 11:30-12:00 so we head out for one last look at Florence. After that we head back to the apartment and grab our stuff and make our way down to the train station for our 12:40 train to Rome. Of course the train is running late, all our train journeys either within or into Italy on Trenitalia have been late. We were 2 minutes late in total on all the other train services we have used on this holiday but the best Trenitalia have managed so far is 15 minutes late on the Milan to Venice route. In addition to that we continue to get crappy advice from anyone wearing a Trenitalia uniform as we get directed to the wrong carriage and then directed back to where we were in the first place. We get on and someone is sitting in our seat so we tell the old codger to get out, (he’s managing to use all 4 of our seats) we are experts at dealing with these people now and it’s a 10 second exercise for him to pack up all his gear and move on. The train journey is a good one with wonderful views out of the window of the Italian country side and all its farms and vineyards. We have decided to treat ourselves on this leg and have a driver pick us up at the train station and take us to our apartment because we are sick of lugging this heavy load of suitcases around. We get to Rome and wait in the spot we had arranged with the apartment people and all we need now is to see a guy with a sign saying SCROOP! We wait.....and we wait..........and we wait. No bloody driver!! We take two seconds to realise where we are and then we remember, we are in Italy and it seems these people can’t get anything right. So half an hour goes by and we are none impressed so we decide to catch a cab. We approach a cab driver and we tell him where we want to go and he informs us he can’t do it, there is a demonstration on today and it’s too hard for this guy to get us within a 50 mile radius of our apartment. Italy is starting to wear thin with us about now as we realise we have to take the underground train. We lug the 6 ½ ton of luggage back down to the metro station, and carry it all down the stairs because escalators are post 1356 and god knows it’s too hard to whack a couple of those in. We find our train and get on board and exit at our stop smack bang in the middle of the demonstration as it’s making its way down the street. We battle the crowds down the street with all our gear and finally reach our apartment. We get greeted by the apartment owner’s parents who are a wonderful elderly couple who speak very little English but they go about giving us the run down. The apartment is tiny compared to what we have had in previous locations but it’s neat and tidy and has everything we need. We drop our stuff and head out and have a look around and because we are only 30m from the Trevi Fountain we thought we’d start there. It was hard to see the Trevi Fountain over the 51,345 people (I counted them) so we decide we will leave that for a week day. We buy some groceries at the supermarket just around the corner and drop them back at the apartment and we head out for another wander and look for a place to have some dinner. We find ourselves at Campo de Fiori and pick a restaurant. The food was rubbish but it was a good night and when we were done we made our way back via the Pantheon for a quick look (that thing is awesome) before heading back to the apartment and into the sack.