Click here to see pictures from our recent trip to Italy with Contiki Tours. We visited Rome, Venice and Florence over 8 days. The people, weather and food (except for breakfast) were fantastic!
We left a cool Toronto on Saturday, May 20 and arrived in a scorching Rome the next morning. We were a little disoriented at the airport – new language, new faces, no sleep – and were almost screwed by a shuttle driver. Our Contiki guidebook read that the hotel was accessible by train and bus, or cab. It said a cab was 40 – 50 Euros, and about 20 to 30 for the train/bus combo. The shuttle driver said, “I can take you for 20 Euros each; 15 minutes to the hotel. The train is 2 hours and will cost 40 Euros!” We were almost convinced but decided to check out the train.
Good thing we did.
The train was 10 Euros total, and the bus was 1 Euro each. It took about 40 minutes, and 15 of that was spent waiting for the bus.
We arrived at the hotel, and were a little surprised. I think that the rating system in Italy is different than what we have in Toronto. Now don’t get me wrong; The hotel was clean and the staff were very friendly and helpful. It just wasn’t what I was expecting. Aside from being a lot different from what we were expecting, it was also in what felt like the middle of nowhere. After the initial shock of seeing our accomodations, all that was on my mind was having a hot shower, and getting into some shorts!
We were scheduled to meet the Contiki tour manager at 6:00pm so we had about 5 hours to go and explore. After getting some directions from the front desk, we hopped on a city bus and made our way towards “downtown” and got off at St. Peter’s Basilica. We strolled around the square and then made our way toward Castel St. Angel. For Catholics and Da Vinci Code fans, all of these sights must mean something, because there were people everywhere! (Except of course, in the pictures I’ve posted.)
After walking around for another hour or so, we made our way back to the bus stop; our trip downtown took about 20 minutes so we figured getting to the bus stop at 5:00pm would get us back to the hotel with time to spare. Boy were we wrong! At 5:55pm the bus finally showed up to take us back to the hotel.
We arrived at the hotel around 6:15pm and made our way to the already-in-progress meeting with our tour guide. We listened to her explain how the tour works, filled out some paperwork and then headed for our room. We were both really in need of sleep at this point; this would become the theme for our week.
The wake-up call on Monday came very early! We got up, packed and made our way down for breakfast. Today was a travel day from Rome to Venice, with a stop in the magical medieval city of San Gimignano.
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