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Rome, Italy
41° 54' N 12° 29' E
Feb 05, 2005 16:20
Distance 1298km

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Other entries in Rome

Day 1

Text written in: English

The plane was half-empty. I had all three seats in my row for myself. Gotta love flying in the low season. I arrived in Rome some two hours after taking off, and by 1900 I was at Roma Termini - the main railway station in Rome. My hostel was (and still is) not far from it. On a map, that is. One thing I did not know when my train from the airport, the "Leonardo Express", pulled into the station was that the platform it stopped at was NOT in the main part of the building. At least, it was not close to it. There's one very, VERY long platform (just how long, I found out on the last day when I had to run to catch my train :), but that's another story) and the train stopped at the end that's furthest from the main building. There was an exit nearby, which I took to be the main exit which I had seen on a map, so I confidently stepped outside. It did not take me long to realize that what I saw around me did not quite match my map, no matter how hard I stared at it. So there I was navigating dark alleyways with a map in one hand, a printout of directions to the hostel in the other, and a puzzled look on my face. It took me a few minutes to figure out where I really was. After that finding the hostel was a snap, just like they had said :).
After checking in, and dragging all my stuff to my room, which was on either 4th of 5th floor (can't remember anymore) I decided it would be a good idea to have a look around the city, and thus I went exploring. My first move was to go to the Termini station (yes, the main building this time :)) see what's there and then walk West towards Centro Storico, though I did not have any specific destination in mind. And that turned out to be a good thing because I did not get far. When leaving my room, I decided not to put on my sneakers. About half an hour later the  Rome's hilly streets and my leather shoes were really leaving their mark on my feet. For some reason I had expected the streets to be flat, and I remembered them as such from when I was in Rome last time many years ago. Rome - a city built on seven hills - d'uh... Yeah, I should have known that there probably was a reason why it was called like that. As I walked back I was kicking myself for not thinking about it - though not too vigorously, because my feet hurt :)
In the end, that evening, Piazza Barberini was where I decided I had had enough I turned around.