Pre-cruise Rome

August 1st, Daniel left by car at about 5am and started driving with most of our bags and one from the Levy family. We weren't flying out until around 5pm on Ryan Air, which now has a strict 15 kilo limit on each bag. Except for a bit of traffic around Milan, Daniel made good time, arriving before we did. The trip is about 1100 kilometers but Daniel makes better time when there aren't fights and throwing up going on in the back seat!

These are from our first night. We are obviously very tired and took these pictures at a fountain near the hotel.







Here's the hotel I found. It was tough to get two connecting rooms, for only two nights, in August in Rome. Hotels kept recommending other hotels and finally I found this;

http://www.hotelbritannia.it/en/index.htm

It was charming and the service was great. The reception set up our taxis at reasonable prices and the breakfast was good. We were also very central. The only drawback is that the rooms were tiny and we did hear a lot of garbage trucks in the early morning, easily fixed by closing the windows at night. It wasn't super delux but for the short time we were there, it was fine.

Here are the kids in the lobby;





The next day, our only one in Rome, we opted to take the open top tourist bus. This has been a great option in London and Barcelona. Daniel had to work in the morning and getting around big cities with three little kids isn't too easy and these, albeit tourist rip-off buses work great in this situation.

The kids in front of the Vatican;