Gotta say, the Reception at this hotel are on the ball! Michael - while having a shower this morning - pulled on a cord near the shower in the hope that it may have been an exhaust fan, but in fact it was an emergency call button. They phone straight away to check that everyone was OK in the room. How silly are we, wont do that again!! We both spent some time doing blogging, emails, face-booking etc this morning. I even managed to chat with Megan on Facebook which made my day! She sent though the most beautiful photo which brought tears to my eyes - missing all three of my children.
We headed down for breakfast in the hotel dining room once more to have yet another healthy breakfast. We then headed out for a quick stroll, this time in a different direction where we found a department store not unlike Myers or David Jones where we had a wander through. Another common sighting in Rome are enormous solid doors leading up to peoples apartments. These doors are huge and give the impression more of a fortress than a home. Beautifully polished golden kick plates, adorned with anti intrusion spikes paired with polished name plates and door bells and ornate stone carving above make for a truly grand entrance!
Given that we had to check out by 12noon, we came back to our room to pack our bags and ensure everything was in order. This hotel had the smallest lift I have ever seen! We couldn't both fit in the lift with our suitcases, so we had to take the bags down to reception one at a time - hilarious! We said a last goodbye to Hotel Oxford and Anna - our delightful waitress who tended us each meal we had there. She was a tiny dot of a lady with a huge bubbly and enthusiastic personality. Hopefully there will be many more Anna's on our journey!
We caught a taxi who drove us to the next stage of our Journey. What a hair raising drive it was! The drivers in Italy are insane, brave, inpatient but not aggressive, amazing judges of spaces and brilliant parkers!!!!
Our destination - Hotel Pineta Palace - is in suburbia Rome, unlike the city location we had just left. Very different! We met up with the Cosmos Tour Director - Patricia - who ran through the events for the rest of today and tomorrow! We decided to have one more evening on our own before joining in the optional tours tomorrow! Our room is VERY basic, but clean! Again, we have scored twin beds, but I think we will be upgraded to a double for the rest of the tour! We even have a tiny balcony with a chair if we want to enjoy the view!
Once our baggage was organized, we wandered down to the cafe for a sandwich and cuppachino. There is an outside area just off this small cafe area which was lovely, a place one can sit and enjoy the weather of Rome.
Our afternoon was truly lazy! I actually caught up on blogging and Michael dozed on his bed listening to -yep you guessed it - 3AW! No plans for tonight, so apart from heading down for a snack at dinner time (which was a yummy pizza), we will have an early night as we will be up at 5.30am to be ready for the first day of the tour.
looks like you are having a great time exploring and yes, aren't the driving/parking/speeding etc unreal....I was there about 5 years ago, we were doing 100 on the freeway and we were getting beeped and abused for going to slow!...I think it is funny when they park double or triple layered and if the person who owns the car nearest the curb comes back, they just sit and beep the horn until the owners of the other cars come back and let them out...no wonder Italians are constantly late for everything :)
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