Rome (Roma), the Vatican and Siena

(I am behind in this blog and starting to group places together😒)

Our last day in Santorini started out great; a late check-out, buffet breakfast at the hotel followed by a swim in the ocean and some last minute beach-glass hunting.

Then the travel gods decided that the Rice’s had had enough easy transitions. I had had trouble with Vueling Airline’s website: it wouldn’t let me add baggage to our flight. I had tried repeatedly knowing that paying at the airport would be more expensive, but the system just would not let me do it. At the terminal counter, the checkin clerk told us 50€ per bag! That was more than triple the online rate! We showed her proof of the system error and our multiple attempts – all to no avail. She advised us to take it up with Vueling directly at the Rome airport. Vueling at the Rome airport gave us a toll free number, great. Vueling, a Spanish company, doesn’t appear to employ customer service people with English speaking ability. I believe that this entire situation was created by design with profit in mind, scenical? No doubt!

In Rome, we followed the airport car rental agency signs to the proper area to find our, (reminds me of the old Hertz commercial), “not exactly” top rated rental car company: Centauro. So they are not the highest rated but they are cheap: 45€ for 10 days of rental. Evidently, after much searching with no success, they don’t have a counter in the airport, you have to go to the shuttle bus area and get picked-up to go to the counter. Slight delay but we made it. They did try their best to sell us everything they could think of and we declined, heck, they wanted more for the roadside assistance than for the rental!?! I was wondering if they knew something about their cars that I didn’t🤔.

Rome has a lot to see and first on our list was The Colosseum. We purchased a tour that included the “skip the line,” which was great. Not so great was our “frustrated History Professor” guide. Actually, I thought she was pretty good, Terri thought she had way too many details that she wanted to impart upon us. The Colosseum and the surrounding area is awesome and totally worth the price – whatever that may include. The Trevi fountain was also outstanding and free, check-out the pictures. Towards the end of the day, tired both physically and mentally, we headed to our bus stop for the quick ride home. Except, the travel gods had another idea for us. We waited for over an hour for a bus that is suppose to run every 15-20 minutes. Frustrated now, we decided to walk towards home and watch for a bus. After a short walk, a local pizza place looked really good with a strong showing of happy customers on it’s patio and a bus stop close by – we decided it was time for dinner. Not long after we were seated inside, the skies opened up not with just rain but good sized hail. We soon found ourselves in a crowded pizzeria with a lot of customers and staff unprepared for the sudden change in weather. Everyone took it pretty well; the pizza and wine were good, the beer was cold and attitudes jovial. The bus showed up after we finished dinner and the hail had stopped, we made it home tired and ready for bed.

Our second day was spent at the tenth country we were going to visit this trip: Vatican City. We had met some people who had already done the tour with a great guide and had given us her name but she was booked. We took a chance and grabbed the next available guide and were pleasantly surprised. She did a great job at keeping us entertained while giving us enough information that we felt we had a good understanding of the important aspects of the Vatican, its history, the artists and their ideas.

After two days in the Rome and Vatican tourist crowds, we were ready for something a little less congested: Siena! It was a beautiful drive, (our Centauro Fiat was very comfortable), up through Tuscany and we found our hotel to be a very nice and lovely old mansion, Villa Scacciapensieri. Siena was beautiful with fewer crowds and very walkable.

Next stop: Cinque Terre