Our first travel day began around 4PM with Ilya's dad picking us up to take us to the airport. All was pretty painless and uneventful leading up to boarding the flight. We got dinner in the airport and then decided to treat ourselves to slice of cake and a tiny bottle of wine.
It’s our honeymoon, might as well go crazy!!
We sat in the first row of business class so we didn't have to worry about seats reclining on our laps and probably got a little extra legroom. Our flight took off around 9:30 PM and landed around 9 hours later in Rome, around noon local time. As you may know, trying to sleep on a plane is not super awesome. I had to share an armrest with the Italian, slightly chubbier version of Zach Galifianakis, and being in the first row meant I had to dig my tray table out of said shared armrest, which was super awkward especially because he kept dozing while on the armrest. But anyway, everything was according to plan. Our airline, Alitalia, served pretty decent food and the flight was as comfy as could be expected. After landing, we found a slick deal bus to take us to the Rome train station which was just a 5 minute walk from the Bettoja Atlantico Hotel, where we stayed. The hotel is on Via Cavour, which is a busy main street in Rome. The room was surprisingly nice. Nice size, nice furniture, and a very clean, modern bathroom. It faced out onto Via Cavour, which as I said, is busy and therefore noisy. It remains noisy pretty much 24 hours a day. However, it ended up being not that bad because, as many of you know, Ilya and I are white noise addicts and rely on a fan's hum to lull us to sleep every night. Without a fan, the sound of constant cars passing by did the trick. When we got to the hotel, we showered and then napped for a few hours. Then we made our way up to the hotel’s rooftop bar for our complimentary glasses of champagne.
From here, we ventured out for dinner. We ended up picking Pizzeria Est! Est!! Est!!! from our guidebook. We shared a half-size bottle of the house white wine, the prosciutto and melon appetizer, and a pizza with funghi (mushrooms).
Everything tasted great! A guy, not affiliated with the restaurant, came over to our table offering to sell a rose to Ilya for "small money", which we did not buy. Little did we know this would be the first of many encounters with creepers selling junk to tourists. We wandered around a bit, got some gelato, and went back to the hotel to call it a night. We had a busy day 2 planned! Here we are with our first of many gelato treats!
2 comments:
Love the pics! Funny about the creepers selling (only one euro!!) junk, we kept trying to decide where they were all from, and we finally decided Egypt. I forget why we came to that conclusion though!
this is so fun to read! Yay! and i love how we can see Ilya's ring in the last picture- you guys are looking good!
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