From Buenos Aires to Italy

Getting to Rome

Today…our final day! Again, not without its own adventure.  Everything had been so well planned out…take the bus from Amalfi…right across the street from the hotel. But something about the bus leaving every hour or 2 concerned me…and when I went downstairs and asked…I was told there were only 2 buses that left on Sundays and they were before 6:30 am!  There was a ferry that could take us to Salerno and there was a train that could take us to Naples in time to catch our train…but it was leaving in 35 minutes!  They helped us get our luggage to the dock and we again were off and got to the ferry and someone again helped both of us down the stairs to get onto the ferry.  Once we got to Salerno, I was told no taxi would take us only a few minutes to the train station and that we’d have to walk.  Yes, we’d been able to consolidate all our luggage into two rollable stacks, but they were relatively heavy and sometimes awkward. But it really didn’t take us long to get there.  

We went to the ticket agent to buy a ticket from Salerno to Naples and realized there might be a train that goes from Salerno to Rome. Indeed that was true…Salerno was the starting point and the ticket lady for Trenitaliano was very helpful and was able to book us in the same seats that we already had and only pay a small fee for the trip from Salerno to Naples and never get off the train!

Guardian Angels

Escaping the Train station from Rome was another matter!  Thank God, the woman who was sitting next to us, Audrey, was from the US but now lives in Naples and studies in Rome said she’d help us. That’s when we realized that when I booked the cheaper train, it didn’t go to the same train station that was next to our hotel and that we’d need to take a metro to get near where we needed to go.  She said she’d lead the way since she was going 1 stop further on the metro than where we needed to go.  

Thank God for angels in disguise. She did exactly as she said, she helped us as needed with our luggage, she took us so we didn’t have to do stairs until we found the metro and took it to the correct stop.  Off the very packed metro train, we were walking and unsure where to go, we stopped and a small pastry shop and asked where to go and a woman, who must have been getting off work, said…she’d take us…and led us all the way out of the Metro station, up lots of stairs, across streets and to the Termini Train Station (the one we thought we were going to in the first place) and right to where we needed to get in line for a taxi.

Rome at last

Once there, we ran into some folks returning to America, who told us about some incredible Viator tours of wineries and archeological digs. Once we had our taxi it was a fairly short trip to the hotel.  

Again, from the outside, just part of the street, but the entrance was fantastic…the room was less so…the location of how to get to the room was a maze…and simply an ok room…nothing to write home about.

On our second day in Rome, we took a taxi to our tour location, where we got a tour of the Vatican Museum…

The Sistine Chapel…

and St. Peter’s Basilica! 

Finally, I took a picture from the outside looking back at the Vatican Plaza from which we just left…

Finally, we took a taxi home and ate dinner at a new hidden gem that you’d never know from the outside.  The food was good, but not like what we had in Amalfi and elsewhere.