reveles romanum – 1

Soooooooo….. I needed to blow my Emirates free miles on something before they expire and since Emirates is partnered with EasyJet, I was able to grab a return flight to Rome for …… free ^^.

As anyone who has ever traveled with me knows – I do an absurd amount of research before I go anywhere….most of which I never end up using 😀

But it gives me a sense of security; knowing a rough plan of what I want to see and experience. And in case of transportation and free tours and stuff, it is really helpful to plan ahead.

So let’s get started with this story, shall we?

Sunday, 4 March 2018

I left packing to the last minute and also decided last minute to take the car to the airport (and not the bus as originally planned), because I found an offer for a parking space with shuttle to the airport for less than the price of the ‘official’ shuttle bus. My original plan was to leave the car at a park+ride in Neuenburg (about a 15 minute drive from my house) and then take the official shuttle bus which is run by a company called ‘Freiburger Reisedienst’. They do roundtrips from Freiburg via Neuenburg to the airport near Basel almost hourly….BUT the roundtrip from the park and ride would have cost 25€ – for a trip of less than 25km each way. Not what I call value for money. Plus, my car would’ve just stood there out in the open (my little booboo unprotected?!? NEVER!!), so instead I opted for a parking lot with 24/7 surveillance and a shuttle transfer to the airport and back for 23,52€. Not a huge difference monetary wise, but I have peace of mind concerning my little car 😉

Anyhooo….that was a long intro about nothing much 😉

So i got to the airport at around 4:30pm, went through security and to the gate….where I proceeded to sit and wait for over an hour for boarding. I never learn…..the Basel-Mulhouse airport is SO SMALL that you can get away with arriving an hour before take-off without any problems. BUT….I guess I err on the side of caution.

One funny thing about this airport is that it has different sectors. While it is physically located in France, there is also a swiss section of the airport.

So to get to my destination today I actually passed through 4 countries. I took the car from Germany to France, then inside the airport I passed to the Swiss sector, where I boarded a plane headed for Italy. ^^ All within a span of 4 hours…

The flight itself was uneventful, and after a landing on time (*gasp* punctuality in Italy??) I even managed to catch the bus into the city center.

I had prebooked the Terravision shuttle bus for 9€ roundtrip online and it was a pretty pleasant ride to Termini station.

Termini is the main railway station in Rome and just like in most major cities, it is not the most pleasant of areas…..lots of homeless people, trash, and just an overall uneasy feeling. So I booked it out of there as fast as I could, walking the 15 minutes to the hostel.

I am staying at TheRomeHello, a fairly new hostel in the center of town. €66 for 4 nights in a 4-bed dorm was a deal I couldn’t resist. Even though I usually hate hostels….finances dictate style sometimes.

I checked in and immediately headed to the restaurant for dinner (in pure italian fashion I was eating dinner at 10pm….but the cheeseburger and Guinness combo was just too hard to resist. It was pretty good, and at €8 fairly reasonably priced…although the meat was a bit too undercooked for my taste.

So, this concludes the arrival day. I have a full day planned for tomorrow….hopefully the weather will hold.

Keeping you posted…