We caught the shuttle bus to the airport, and that worked well, arriving at 10:30 for our 1:30 flight. Of course the flight left 2 hours late because of the French air traffic controllers strike. There is a website listing who is currently on strike in France.
In the airport we ran into a Canadian couple that we had met on our flight into Toulouse the week before. They own a canal boat on the Midi and have for 18 years. The weather we were out in was so bad (in their opinion) that they had stayed in Carcassonne and didn’t even go to their boat until it improved.
At the Rome airport we decided to take a taxi to the small hotel that Vic had booked as it was only 15 minutes away, rather than try to call and arrange and wait for their shuttle. The driver quoted 14 €, and that sounded okay. When we got there he claimed that he had quoted 40, and we misheard. I am not at my best in a shouting match in a parking lot in a foreign language. We eventually paid to get out of it. I suppose an alternative was a fist fight with a rather fit looking skinhead type Italian taxi driver, but that might not have gone my way either. I have since thought of a couple alternatives, but they did not occur to me at the time. The Rome taxi drivers are a rapacious, heartless bunch. The other Italian taxi drivers we used were really pleasant and honest.
The hotel proprietor was very nice and his attitude nearly made up for it.
We had our last Roman pizza, and called it a night.
Skip to content
On the Move – Photos From Here and There
Everywhere is walking distance if you have the time. -Steven Wright