Our Trip: Part I

There is so much to share about our trip, that I decided to break it into a couple of segments. This is part one:

Our trip started by flying out of Catania Sicily to Rome. The flight went smoothly and we arrived in Rome after only being in the air for one hour. That's the kind of flight I like!

When we arrived at the Fiumicino airport in Rome, we were excited to start our adventure. This airport in located in the outskirts of Rome. You have to take a train to the main train/subway station in Rome called Stazione Termini. This station is located in the center of the city. After collecting our luggage without a hitch, we started looking for the train terminal.

From talking to friends and reading a guide book, we were able to easily find the train terminal to purchase our tickets for the train ride to Termini. You can either buy the tickets yourself at an automated machine or purchase them from a counter. (Important side note: We definitely recommend getting a guide book by Lonely Planet, Rick Steve's, etc. It was a lifesaver!)

The train you take to Termini is called the Leonardo Express (Really...I didn't make that up!) and leaves the airport every 30 minutes to the Termini station. We jumped on this train (which was very crowded) and arrived quickly in the center of Rome.

Once we got to Termini, we looked for the subway system that would eventually get us to our hotel. Termini was a bustling station with lots of stores, cafes, and lots and lots of people. We figured out which metro stop we needed for our hotel and jumped on the metro. For the main part, our day of traveling went pretty well. We were a little tired from lugging our suitcases around, but we made it.

We arrived at our subway stop which also was a bus station. We called our hotel to see if they had a shuttle to pick us up. After a slight miscommunication of where to go to be picked up, we made it to the pick up point and was finally picked up by the 6:15pm shuttle. Once we got to our hotel, we were exhausted. After a meal at the hotel restaurant for dinner, we called it a day. We decided that we could have made our own rendition of the movie "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles." The next day we would begin our sight-seeing adventure by visiting the Colosseum and other ancient Roman ruins!