Rome if you want to...........

Coupla gladiators having a chat

the street where we live

house across the road.........noice

our apartment....groovy

X marks where our apartment is.......excellent

more Cinque Terra photos.......because you're worth it (and I'm in them)

Oh dear, this is so hard. We have scored a drunken bullseye in Rome. Scored a fabulous apartment via CrossPollinate (thanks Rach) which is literally just up the street from the Colloseum (see map pic). CrossPollinate deals in letting out locals 'homes' or 'rooms' to travellers in these cities. We stayed in one in Paris with Domingo. This one is much better in that it is bigger, and the owner, Paola, isn't here, she has a house by the sea and only stays here three months of the year. She met us today and was very gracious as we lobbed in early from Firenze.

We had a great, fast drive into the southern airport (thanks Tim) of Rome to leave the beloved Panda at the Europcar depot. The shuttle driver to the bus stop seemed apathetic at first, but when he, Andrea, realised we were Orstraylian, he showed us his tat (photo in next blog) that he is 'Aussie Made'. He is planning to emigrate next year.

We got the other shuttle to Roma termini. I think there is some scam going on here. People were lined up for the buses, but we encountered a young woman in flouro who quickly asked if we were one way or return, and sold us a shuttle ticket for 4 euro each. We didn't need to wait in line...... We still haven't worked out why those people waited in line. Seems to be an accepted form of business here to buy tickets (and pay a premium) to get to the 'front of the line' . I am quite happy to pay an extra couple of euro NOT to wait in line. But we are being exploited.

I must say, on the other hand, we had a great taxi driver from the termini. In a long line of taxis, we had to go to the front and we encountered two drivers. One had the sunglasses, spruiking and asking where we were going, once he found out where we were going he didn't want to know us. The other was calmly motioning to his taxi, calmly took us to our apartment (with much map reading and GPS checking) and then checked with the locals because he thought we were looking for a hotel. Lovely. He earnt his tip.

So here we are. Just near the Colloseum, as oi said, but more of that later..............