Rome 2007 – Day 1
We caught our flight from Barcelona to Rome on time. Our adventure was getting our bags. As we exited the plane, we were led to the baggage return, without going through customs, which I thought was odd, but Henry thought maybe they did things differently in Rome. We waited for our bags, with everybody else. When almost all the bags were on the conveyor built, security came and shooed everybody out into the airport, without going through customs and told us we could come back later to get our bags. It made no sense! Henry went to the RyanAir counter to find out how to get our bags while I tried looking for the shuttle into Rome. I found the shuttle very quickly, but Henry disappeared for nearly an hour. I was worried, but eventually he came back out with our bags. So apparently, they started to force everybody to go through customs, but then more flights were coming in, and then they let everybody in, without going through customs. Sounds like a huge breach in security, who knows who was wrongfully let into Rome?
The shuttle to Rome usually takes about 40 minutes, but we were getting in during rush hour so it took about 90 minutes. Most of the bus ride was in local traffic, a lot of it was not on the highway. We got dropped off at a big station and walked to our hotel which was not that far away, about a 15 minute walk. Along the way, I saw two dead birds on the streets. Gross!
Our hotel was pretty crappy and sparse, but it was a room. It was supposedly a three star hotel, but no way was it even close, though we didn’t really expect it to look like a three star hotel. We dropped off our stuff and freshed up and then left to wander around and eventually find food. We wandered around for an hour walking down the Spanish Steps and along Via Veneto.
We ended up going with a Frommer‘s recommendation, Aurora 10 da Pino il Sommelier. The owner was very welcoming. The bread was got tasted stale, very disappointing. For the appetizer we got the mixed seafood. It was very good, but it only had mussels and clams, and was a tad bit salty. But it made the stale bread taste much better. We also got the tagalione with prawn which was very good. The tortellini in alfredo was very standard and nothing special. The grilled strips of fillet in gorgonzola sauce was very blah. The grilled fillet with green sauce was also blah and we didn’t figure out what was in the green sauce. But the Chianti that the waiter recommended was good and went well with the food.