Rome, here we come - 17 May.

After a good night's sleep, it is off to the sister hotel for breakfast, where I made sure to try a Portuguese tart. Not sure what the fuss us about. Flaky pastry bases, with creamy egg custard filling that had little sweetness to it. I enjoyed it as much as I like Krispy Kreme donuts. A lot of hoopla about nothing.

Time to book out of our hotel and get our ride to the airport. Our driver was a bit early for the 9am pick up, but we were ready, so off we head. Due to the one way streets and mad traffic lights system, we have turned 3 corners to get to the other end of the street we started from, only to hit gridlock. Metres ahead of us are 2 buses, side by side, facing an on coming tram. The buses have hazard lights on,people are getting off the buses and we are only half way around the intersection blocking other traffic. We sat like that for 10 minutes, with the few cars in front of us eventually deciding to make right turns. Our driver finally gives up in the line and makes the right turn that took us directly past our hotel where he picked us up from 20 minutes earlier.Jeez... He is now taking an alternative route that is still very slow but finally we are suddenly at the airport. It is all a bit confusing but we manoeuvre ourselves through check in and luggage drop off. Then it's a further confusing entry through the security check. No one wanted to see our passports so am nit sure how their Immigration system works, or do they even have one? And now we wait, as it if almost 3 hours til our flight, but at least we have followed the locals' advice to arrive very early as there are often delays not just in traffic, but in check in and security control. We have so much time, that I'm-even able to complete yesterday's blog. Our flight's gate is still not showing and it is 11,30, with an expected 12.50 departure. I find an information fellow wgo guvesme the gate number which we dutifully head to. Andagain we wa. Finallwe arellowee t board but it is like Brown's cows and I get the impression that most of the staff are on work experience as they certaiinly don't appear to have an inkling on what their job entails. But we get to our seats and settle in. It is a full plane and as we are in economy, we are very keen dor the drink cart to come aroun. I have my credit card outt,ready and waiting. But there is a 30 minute delay sitting on the tarmac until we are finally underway. We were finally able to get our wine and pringles!

3 hours later we arrive in Rome. Our cases took ages to come onto the conveyor belt, but arrive they did. We made our way to the entrance and tried to find the APT Travelmarvel rep who is meant to be holding a sign with our names on. We stumble over and old fellow who has a sign for another tour company, but with Robinson on it. Julie tries to ask him if he is from APT but his English is as good as her Italian is! Thankfully there is a younger woman nearby who is able to interpret for us and after cinferring with another old guy and 2 phone calls, the first old guy turns out to be our driver, but another driver took the APT sign or some such issue. We are hopeful but nit entirely confident that the old guy is going to get us to the right hotel, but at least we are out of the airport and in a lovely new BMW sedan. It takes near on an hour to get to the hotel where he deposits us at the door. We go to check in, only to be told that there is no booking for us. I give them the tour paperwork I have which shows that our actual tour doesn't start until tomorrow afternoon but we have booked and paid for tonight's accommodation. No amount of searches on the computer find our names for tonight, but we are booked for tomorrow night. To make matters worse, the hotel is fully booked. The receptionist tries their nearby sister hotel and can get us a room for more than 500 Euros. I tell her that I am not paying anything more for a hotel room I have already paid for. I am desperately trying to find the documents from our travel agent in my emails. While I am doung this, Julie is checking the time in Adelaide to contact our travel agent, but it is about 2.40 am there so we are now searching for a local after hours number for the tour company. Finally (after about 15 minutes)the receptionist who had left the front counter, returned and said that she had found our booking! It had not been correctly entered. With that we were then asked to wait in the dining area while she tried to sort something out for us. We were offered a complimentary drink so each chose a wine and then we were given some finger food to keep us going.

When the receptionist eventually came to us, she told us that she had booked a room for us at the sister hotel. She also booked a taxi to take us there. The plan was for us to spend tonight in the other hotel which was a few blocks away, then get a taxi (at their expense) back to this hotel in the morning, where they would store our luggage until our room became available. As the alternative was sleeping rough on the street we headed to the other hotel, checked in and made our way to our roomfor the night. It was now 8pm and we were ready for dinner so headed down the street to a restaurant and had pasta! Back to the hotel and then bed.

What a day. We figure we can deal with one bad day during our holiday, and this was it!