Day 1 - Our road trip through Italy and southern France

Day 1 of the Italy/France Road Trip

In the very early hours of 22nd June 2013 we left our house in the rural countryside of England and made our 2 and a half hour journey to London Gatwick where we boarded our Easyjet flight to Rome Fiumicino airport.  The airport in Rome was very busy and we struggled to find the check-in desk for our car hire company.  We went to the area where all of the other car hire companies were based only to find that the one that we had booked with was not there!  Panic set in as we urgently needed to get to Rome as I had pre-booked tickets for the Vatican City which was due to close in a few hours!  I checked the booking confirmation to find that we needed to travel back down stairs with our luggage and needed to wait for the car hire company's transfer bus to pick us up as they were located off the airport.  Feeling a bit stress after not having any sleep from the night before, we stood outside an waited.  Chris, now my Fiance, decided to pull his wheeled suitcase off the huge curb letting the wheel buckle under the strain!  This is all we needed to start off our road trip holiday where we will be wheeling out suitcases in and out of hotels every-other day!

We picked up our car, an italian Fiat Punto, and headed into Rome.  At one point we had to do a 'hill start' in the car, where we are from there are no hills so it is always daunting, let alone doing it in a car that we have just picked up, driving on the 'wrong' side of the road and sitting on the 'wrong' side of the car!  The traffic lights turned green, the car in front of us moved annnnd we stalled it!  Turns out our car had a start/stop engine!  The cars behind started bibbing their horns but we eventually got the hang of it!

We managed to park the car down a side street near the Vatican City and we headed in the direction of the Vatican; it was so busy, I had never seen so many people!  We spent 30 mins trying to find the entrance and ending up paying 20 euros each extra for a guided tour on top of our already purchased tickets.  This actually turned out to be a really good idea, to start off with we was on the other side of the Vatican to the entrance, we would have struggled to find it, and we got a guide with us for the whole tour so we actually got to learn a few things too, bonus!  Going to the Vatican City is one of those things that everyone has to do in their life time, even just to say that you have been there!

Later on we got back in the car and headed towards our hotel.  Along the way the sat nav decided to take us the scenic route through the centre of Rome, we went passed most of the famous sites that we wanted to see including the Colosseum!  It felt like we was on a mini tour and had seen Rome by the time we had got to the hotel! 

We stayed in the UNA Hotel Roma which was a lovely hotel with a brilliant location.  We will definitely stay at this hotel again when we next visit Rome.  The hotel room was clean and modern and was a perfect base for our 2 night stay.

In the evening with found a lovely outdoor restaurant close to our hotel and we had a delicious meal.

This city is so beautiful and the people are so friendly, I would recommend anyone to visit! 

Emma x