Landed in Fumicilio airport about 20 min (around 2:20pm local time) late because of a logistics problem at Frankfurt which kept us on the ground for that time. We immediately started walking towards immigration / customs, but kept seeing signs only towards baggage claim and the exit. We didn't pay much attention to that and found ourselves at the baggage claim very soon. Conveyor belt #11 was assigned to us, so we took up a strategic position and waited. And waited. And waited. And waited. After 15 minutes, some people suddenly started running towards a different conveyor belt and we realized that FCO had probably switch belts on us without any announcement, so we followed. We went to belt #10 and started waiting there. After 5-6 minutes, we got our two big suitcases. However, the small carry-on suitcase that Lufthansa forced us to check in at Frankfurt at the gate had not yet come. After waiting a further 10 min, we realized that it wasn't going to come. Nightmare stories of Rome (theft, pickpocketing, etc.) started coming back to us. We were very sure that somebody had just picked up our suitcase and walked away. The worst part was that it contained our precious camera and a bunch of less useful stuff, so it looked like we were starting off our holiday on a very sour note. I walked up to Lufthansa's baggage claim section to file a complaint. I was also thinking to myself about how ironic it was that the only trip on which I decided to pay for "trip insurance" was the one that I promptly go and lose an item of baggage in! The line that I was in was moving slower than molasses. I waited for more than 15 min and moved about one position up the line. Then, miracle of miracles, the others (who I had left behind at the conveyor belt) came walking up, rolling the missing suitcase! Apparently, just for kicks, the baggage handler decided to put only this one suitcase on the original conveyor belt (#11), so we didn't find it on #10 where we had been sent to. We quickly started rushing towards the exit to catch our transport to the hotel, but some kind of doubt / concern was nagging me. We had not gone through immigration and nobody had checked if we were allowed to enter Italy. How's that work? I didn't want to get in trouble later so I asked one of the customs officials about it. She said that if we were US citizens, we didn't have to bother about it (I knew that already!). Then, I spotted a foreign exchange booth and went to get some Euros. While he was doing the paperwork, I asked him about the lack of an "immigration step" in the entry workflow in FCO. He said that the gate / terminal that we landed in was only for inter-Europe flights, so our immigration should have already been done in a different country in Europe. That's when the light dawned upon us about the significance of the process we had to go through in Frankfurt before we got on to the FRA-FCO flight. We had already finished our immigration formalities in Frankfurt. It was our port of entry for the Euro group of countries.
Anyway, reassured with that bit of information, we walked out of the airport building and looked for a person holding up a placard with my name. We saw one lady who we approached and showed our voucher to her. She told us that we would have to wait for about half an hour for the next bus and asked us to have a coffee or something and join us at a particular place after that. We wandered around and the kids found the 'Kwality Wall' symbol and wanted to have an ice-cream sandwich. So, we spent our first Euro on a couple of Algida (that's what it's called here, apparently) ice-cream sandwiches. The bus came on time and we all hopped on in the front to be close to the driver. It turned out that our driver (who didn't introduce himself) spoke very little English. He knew a few words and tried to use them to the best effect. For example, it sounded like he only knew the names of the first 10 numbers (0 thru' 9), so he would say 'five-zero-zero' for 500. That didn't stop him from rattling on and on about the various sights on the highway. Even completely inane things like the railway line that ran alongside for some time. There was some kind of fire by the side of the highway that was sending up a thick column of smoke and the wind was blowing it across the highway causing visibility to be reduced
and also what local TV/radio stations in the US would call 'gawker delay'. That slowed us down a bit but we finally reached the hotel around 5pm.
After checking in, we went up to to our rooms and were shocked at how small they were. I think the room measured about 17'x11' and that included a 8'x6' bathroom which, in turn, included a 1'x1' standing shower. And, this was supposed to be a 4-* hotel. Although we had seen something similar in Paris, it was still a rude shock. Anyway, we refreshed ourselves a bit and decided to go out and see the Circus Maximus since it was still going to be bright outside for a few more hours. We walked up to Termini, the main railway station (for the Subway and the mainline) and studied the map to understand how to get to Circo Massimo. Then, we bought the tickets and went down to catch our train. We reached our destination without any problems and crossed the road to get a look at the famous Circus Maximus. There's not much to see there.
There is no evidence of the race tracks or of the seating (about 300,000 of them, apparently), so we had to leave a lot to our imagination. We were done in a few minutes and tried to figure out what to do next. We pulled out our trusty map and studied it for a few minutes. We debated getting dinner versus doing a bit of sightseeing. We decided to walk along Via di San Gregorio towards the Colosseum and catch a train back to the hotel from there. The kids had their first gelato from a street vendor. Took the obligatory photos of the Colosseum and then decided that we had enough energy to try and walk back to the hotel, getting some dinner on the way.
We walked on Via Degli Annibaldi towards Via Cavour and turned right. We kept passing numerous pizzerias and ristorantes but decided to be a bit picky about where to eat. Finally, we found one with a decent TripAdvisor rating. I'd also read about it somewhere else so we parked our tired feet and had some pizza/pasta. La Mela d'Oro, I think the name was. Laden with full stomachs and carrying tired feet, the short walk to the hotel from there seemed endless but we finally got there. We knew we had a long day of walking coming up the next day, so we set the alarms to give ourselves time for breakfast and......crashed out!
Anyway, reassured with that bit of information, we walked out of the airport building and looked for a person holding up a placard with my name. We saw one lady who we approached and showed our voucher to her. She told us that we would have to wait for about half an hour for the next bus and asked us to have a coffee or something and join us at a particular place after that. We wandered around and the kids found the 'Kwality Wall' symbol and wanted to have an ice-cream sandwich. So, we spent our first Euro on a couple of Algida (that's what it's called here, apparently) ice-cream sandwiches. The bus came on time and we all hopped on in the front to be close to the driver. It turned out that our driver (who didn't introduce himself) spoke very little English. He knew a few words and tried to use them to the best effect. For example, it sounded like he only knew the names of the first 10 numbers (0 thru' 9), so he would say 'five-zero-zero' for 500. That didn't stop him from rattling on and on about the various sights on the highway. Even completely inane things like the railway line that ran alongside for some time. There was some kind of fire by the side of the highway that was sending up a thick column of smoke and the wind was blowing it across the highway causing visibility to be reduced
After checking in, we went up to to our rooms and were shocked at how small they were. I think the room measured about 17'x11' and that included a 8'x6' bathroom which, in turn, included a 1'x1' standing shower. And, this was supposed to be a 4-* hotel. Although we had seen something similar in Paris, it was still a rude shock. Anyway, we refreshed ourselves a bit and decided to go out and see the Circus Maximus since it was still going to be bright outside for a few more hours. We walked up to Termini, the main railway station (for the Subway and the mainline) and studied the map to understand how to get to Circo Massimo. Then, we bought the tickets and went down to catch our train. We reached our destination without any problems and crossed the road to get a look at the famous Circus Maximus. There's not much to see there.
We walked on Via Degli Annibaldi towards Via Cavour and turned right. We kept passing numerous pizzerias and ristorantes but decided to be a bit picky about where to eat. Finally, we found one with a decent TripAdvisor rating. I'd also read about it somewhere else so we parked our tired feet and had some pizza/pasta. La Mela d'Oro, I think the name was. Laden with full stomachs and carrying tired feet, the short walk to the hotel from there seemed endless but we finally got there. We knew we had a long day of walking coming up the next day, so we set the alarms to give ourselves time for breakfast and......crashed out!
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