Home to Rome

Friday 7th August 2015

We're spending the next few days in Rome on a bit of a last minute trip. Claire's sister Kim is visiting from Australia, and in true Aussie fashion has decided that a little trip across to Europe is nothing compared to what she's used to, hence our rendezvous with Kim as well as Jen and Andrew in Italy instead of England!

There were no direct flights from any airport near us so we have had to fly Manchester-Brussels-Rome. The first leg of the journey - home to Manchester airport was fine and we arrived with plenty of time to spare for a croissant breakfast. Unfortunately, Manchester airport was experiencing a serious croissant deficiency so we had to settle for a far inferior Danish pastry. To make ourselves feel a bit better about the situation we had a pint of lager to go with it.

This is the first time we've flown for a while (I don't think we've flown anywhere since we've had George) and so it was the first time we've been able to try out Apple Passbook's digital boarding passes. Despite my doubts, holding my phone over the scanner worked just fine and we were soon through to departures.

We did not really enjoy the flight to Brussels. I never really enjoy flights but this one was even less enjoyable than usual. We'd accidentally booked seats at the back of the plane so there was no window. I felt a bit sick for most of the journey and was glad to get off at the other end. At least there were no children nearby.

I have always thought that Manchester airport is a pretty grim place, but although the Belgians have obviously made an effort with the appearance of Brussels airport, it turned out to be far more stress inducing than Manchester.

Firstly, the passport control officer looked at my passport, then me, then laughed and waved me through whilst refusing to tell me what he was laughing at. Admittedly, my passport photo isn't a very good likeness but no one's ever reacted like that before.

Then we had to go through security again (don't know where they think we could have got hold of any contraband from) which was a much slower process than in Manchester. Maybe the Belgians don't trust the British to do a proper job of security. The digital boarding passes caused some confusion here, as they wanted to see our passes as we walked through the the metal detector, when our phones were in the scanning machine. We eventually got through and started the lengthy walk to our departure gate.

Claire was getting a bit twitchy about making our connection in time but we arrived before they'd even started boarding, which was a good job because it took me about 10 minutes to get two drinks out of the nearby vending machine, which was a mixture of very modern and very old fashioned. Then the diet coke fell on the floor from a height of about 2 metres so we didn't dare open it for ages.

The second flight was a bit better than the first and we were surprised to suddenly arrive in the outside bit of Rome airport without having been through any sort of security or passport control.

Then we had the usual challenge of getting into the centre of Rome from the airport. We managed to get a bus to some sort of bus station thing, which Claire assured me was only a short walk from the apartment. This worried me slightly as we appeared to in the Bronx, but it turned out that we weren't actually staying in the Bronx, but that Claire's idea of a short walk was somewhat different to mine. As you know, I'm not normally averse to walks, even if they do turn out to be a bit long, but when it's 35 degrees outside and humid then it's a different story.

Claire eventually managed to drag me across the city where we collapsed into the apartment only to be told that we could have caught the tram thing for €1.50 each.

We saw a few of Rome's famous sights on our walk, although I was a bit too hot to be interested. The Pantheon looks like it's definitely worth further investigation when I've acclimatised.

We went to the nearest restaurant to the apartment for dinner, which turned out to be lovely, and quite amusing when the waiter went through the menu with us and explained that one of the pasta dishes was "goldfish and tomatoes". Jen and Andrew had it just to find out what the fish really was, although we never quite made our minds up. Whatever it was, it was a bit too big to be a goldfish though.

Tomorrow we are going to Vatican City.

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