Shereen and I had decided to stay out near the airport for our last night in Rome, as we had an early flight to Athens the next day. So after I had spent the morning watching my AFL team the Eagles get beaten in their next elimination final against Collingwood, Shereen and I split a taxi with Kayla and Paul to the airport before continuing on ourselves to the hotel which should have been another 20 minutes away.
After dropping our friends at the airport we gave the next address to the driver and we set off. After about 20 minutes our driver pulled up in front of a hotel that was not ours. I told him he was at the wrong address and I showed him the correct one again. After looking at it he told me it didn't exist. I told him that was the address on the website and he just kept saying the numbers didn't go up that high on the street. He asked for the phone number of the hotel and he gave them a call, then told us he knew where he was going now and set off again. Another 15 minutes later we were on a dead-end dirt road.
Our driver turned around and called our hotel again and also stopped to ask some policemen for directions. He assured us NOW he knew where he was going, but I wasn't so confident so I started tracking us on my GPS. I also asked him to stop the meter but he refused and just kept saying "it's ok, it's ok". After another 15 minutes I finally spotted our hotel. Too bad that we were on a freeway and we had needed to take the previous exit to get to it. The driver was getting almost as annoyed as me by this point. He was yelling in Italian and banging the dashboard with his fist. After another 5 minutes we finally reached the next exit and got off to backtrack to the hotel. By the time we got back to the hotel the fare was 80 euro. The guy had been completely useless and it had taken us over twice as long as it should have. I whispered to Shereen that we weren't paying a cent over 40 euro and that if he had an issue with that she should run inside the hotel and get someone o help us. When we had gotten our bags out he only asked for 40, so he didn't try and rip us off, but it didn't make it any less annoying. After freshening up, Shereen and I had our last Italian dinner in the little family restaurant next door. We were sad to be leaving the next day, but were also excited to start the next stage of our trip.
Only a short post today to finish up our experiences in Rome. Let's face it, without photos you only want a post to be so long!
Next up is my post on our time in Athens- complete with photos ;)
Xx
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