Arrival

We took off from Florence fairly early - I think it was around 9 or 10 - and took a train back to Rome. We opted for the cheaper regional train; it was around an hour longer than the Eurostar, but half the price.

Hotel Andreina

We decided to stay close to Termini, which made sense since it was only for one night and it saved us from hauling luggage around more than we had to. Hotel Andreina is a couple blocks away from Termini in a building that shares space with other hotels; Andreina is on the 4th floor, but it has rooms on the 3rd. In our case, we had to go through the 4th floor lobby, then down a private elevator to the 3rd floor to get to our room. To leave the hotel, we had to take the elevator back up to 4th and leave that way. It's an extremely annoying process, and would've driven us nuts had it been more than one day.

The room itself was fine; it was quite large (ours had a double and an extra twin bed) and it was quiet enough for the location. No breakfast (although it's an option, for an extra charge) but overall it was decent enough for the 100 euro fee. The entry/exit was so inconvenient though that the only way I'd recommend it is if you doing a 1-night stay with connections at Termini.

One More Look

With one more day in Rome, we wanted to revisit a couple places, namely Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. First, however, I convinced Heather to walk down to the Laterano area - I knew there was a large church there that we hadn't seen yet. We were a bit skeptical on the way there - the area directly south of Termini isn't exactly high-class - but once we got there it proved pretty amazing.

The Basilica di San Giovanni in Laterano was our destination, and it's definitely something to see. It's the official seat of the Pope (not St. Peter's, which is what I assumed), so it's very important in the Catholic Church. Interestingly enough, the basilica is considered property of the Pope even though it is territorially within Rome.


The inside of the basilica is massive and beautiful. The main draws for us were the statues of the twelve apostles (set in niches in the middle of the church) and the seat of the Pope (at the front). Even after seeing a lot of churches on our travels we were still impressed with this one - make sure you don't miss it, even though it's outside of the main tourist area of Rome.


We headed northeast after that, our destination being Piazza Navona. We passed by the Baths of Caracalla and thought about going in, but decided against it since it was already late in the afternoon by then. We walked by the Colosseum and the Forum, then headed back into the Pantheon one more time before arriving at Piazza Navona. After getting a few pictures and being satisfied with getting a chance to see these amazing places one more time, we stopped by the same bar in Campo de' Fiori as before for drinks and appetizers.



Our night ended with trying to find something to eat. The restaurants around the Termini area aren't impressive, at least to us. We walked around for a while before deciding on the fanciest of places: McDonald's. It's funny to think that our last dinner in Italy was there, but it was interesting to notice the differences between a McDonald's there and here in the States. And they have a killer cappuccino shake flavor there; it'd be great if that made it's way over here.

Heading Home

And so ends our Italian vacation. We did grab a bite to eat for breakfast at a little pizzeria near the train station before taking the Leonardo Express back to the airport, but otherwise that was it. We didn't have any problems with our flight back, so everything went pretty smoothly.

To see all of our Rome pictures, go to our Picasa Web Album.