Italy Trip: Getting to Rome

Starting May 28th, the day after my little sister's 16th birthday, Errol and I embarked on the trip of a lifetime! After months of planning and saving up, I was excited for my FIRST trip to Europe: 2 weeks in Italy. We would spend it in four cities - Rome, Greve in Chianti, Florence, and Venice.

Errol's mom dropped us off at the airport very early (4AM!). Looking back at these pictures of the beginning of the trip, we look quite refreshed. While the trip was a dream, it was also pretty exhausting!

The schedule of events:
Orlando (MCO) --> New York City (JFK): 6AM-8:30AM
JFK --> Moscow (SVO): 2:20PM-7:45AM (Russian time, 9 hours total)
SVO --> Rome (FCO): 9AM (Russian time) - 10:45AM (Italy time), total 3 hours

First time on a Russian airline, and I must say we didn't like the plane food all that much. Sorry, Russia! I hope to someday have some of their true delicacies, and not through air travel.

BUT, they did have a TV for everyone with some good movie selections! Tried to sleep as much as possible, but still managed to watch The Hobbit, Tangled, and Pirates of the Caribbean :)

By the time we cleared customs, got our backpacks (which we gladly checked for free through Aeroflot), and figured out our next move it was around 1PM.

First step was to purchase a ticket from the airport to the Termini Train Station in order to walk to our hotel. There's lots of places to buy tickets (bigletti) so we just picked whatever looked most official (many tobacco [tabacchi] stores sell tickets too). 

It's a €19 ticket on the Leonardo Express train to the Termini. There are other trains with stops but we didn't want to take the risk, with our first time riding (more on train travel later... it's quite simple!). Even with no stops it's still about a 30 minute ride. 

Hotel Corallo was the first place! (I'll have a separate post about Rome housing)

We refused to let jetlag get to us, but 3 hours of napping later we felt quite refreshed. Not wanting to waste the entire day, we set off walking around. We found a place for dinner that was empty because it was only 6PM, and Italians eat a couple of hours later. There's one way to look like a tourist!

It was a Napoli pizza (mozzarella and anchovies) on for dinner along with 250 mL white wine and an Italian beer (birra). A lovely first day in this amazing city.