The Quinn Family Excellent Adventure: Goodbye Bari Italy - Hello Roma Italy

We asked which track to grab our train. Glad we did. There are sort of two track 1's. We headed over and puzzled over where our trains car might line up. Sadly this is not Japan and you kinda have to estimate where the train will stop, it's length and thus where your car will be. Minutes before the arrival we heard an Italian only announcement indicated the track was changing. Luckily it only moved to the adjacent track. The train pulled in soon after and we had to scramble a little to find the correct car. I'm doing reserved seats to avoid any goofyness. Our bigger bags sometimes don't fit in the overheads. Some trains have larger shelves for big bags. Some trains offer a decent storage spot between seats that face away from each other. We figured it out and simply had to watch out for our stop if the train continued past a required stop. It was time to blog a bit and watch the Italian countryside go by. The train is a great way to travel here.

Roma has a massive train station. It's not Tokyo but its pretty dang big. We did not risk standing on a bus to our Airbnb so we took out chances with a taxi. There was a pretty busy but well organized taxi stand happening so we waited in line. Eventually a very pretty young girl pulled up with her little car. We knew how to load and a little car is nothing for us now. She was great. She spoke excellent English and we chatted like champs. I always feel the need to explain our significant bags which always leads to a conversation about being off for a year ... She was so jealous and happy for Kaitlyn. She had a pretty young child and was pretty confident on another. She told us we needed to try pizza from Naples. No questions. She pulled us right up to our Airbnb and helped pull out everything while I dug out some cash. She had to charge us extra for a bags. No big deal. 3 Euro's. I think I handed her a 20 which gave her a great tip. She went to offer change and was really surprised to be told to keep it all. She said I love you and hugged us all. Cool girl. I kinda wish we got her contact info. I think we expanded out fan base.

Our Airbnb host was patiently waiting at our drop off spot. https://goo.gl/maps/ni2dgVqXYLXXAbtbA

She did not speak very good English so I whipped out the Pocketalk which helped alot. The apartment was a few flights up and past a pretty beefy caged doorway. The apartment was pretty big and comfy. She showed us around, provided the keys and was off back to work. It turned out she worked in a family restaurant called Tucci in the Piazza Navona https://goo.gl/maps/8MswxtR7WwNs5hnX6. As we were hungry I figured we could check it out. Our Airbnb is situated in the heart of old Roma. The route to the Piazza Navona is a pretty awesome. The Piazza Navona is well visited and so beautiful. We pulled into Tucci and our host found us right away. Next thing we knew we had comfortable chairs and champagne delivered to us. We felt like royalty. I just had to have pizza again. KT had gnocchi. It was sooooo awesome.

Exploration of these cities always begins with long walks. Preferably along rivers. The next day I

did a bit of Googling and found a nice long winding river. Walking towards the river was an impressive number of tourists. The river is quite a bit lower than this part of the city. After one staircase the noise and chaos of the city it mutted 90%. You can walk for many KM's in either direction and often on both sides of the river. It was sooo nice. I walked crazy amount's.

We wanted to see Pompei and Michelle found a tour through Airbnb. The route involved a 2 hour train to Naples. There was no proactive transit research unfortunately. It was time to learn the transit system. It turns out tickets for the local busses can be purchased at Tobacconists. It took a few guesses but we soon had paper tickets for the bus yay. Once on the bus we learned it needs to be activated with a machine. Cool. Once at the train station we had a little time to kill. Our train to Naples was delayed multiple times and expanded to about an hour. We eventually got on a train but this thing stopped multiple times and we decoded announcements about technical issues. The train sounded kinda bad as well. It stopped, started and then made a kinda scary sound like expanding air/roar. Bummer Eek, Google indicated a bus was required from Naples to our final destination of Pompei. Our ticket/bus finding time was rapidly being eaten up. We walked quickly to our bus stop only to find we needed to find another Tobacconist. Dang, they are nowhere when you need one. Panicked we decided to take a taxi. Crap it's like 25 KM's and our taxi dude explained the price is doubled as it's out of the city range and subject to some double tariff charge. 70 friggin Euros ffs, total rip off compared to perhaps 6 for the bus. From that point on, we could not wing our transit planning anymore as it is way to expensive in Europe. At least we made it to Pompeii and had spare time to look around before our Airbnb tour host showed up. My priority was getting back so I walked around figuring out where the bus is and how to get a ticket. That took like 20 minutes but at least we had some bus tickets in hand. A friendly local warned us the bus will probably be late and quite full. Great. Our train back to Roma was already booked. Crossing our fingers we felt slightly more confident about getting back.

We soon met our Airbnb tour host Marina. A few later arrivals were coming so we chatted a bit. Super nice girl. She loves doing tours and did so for free for many years before getting her official licence and doing it for some income. She told us we could take a local train back to Naples. What? Google did not even show that as an option. More options to search out. We soon met another attendee, Kyle from the US who turned out to be a pretty experience tech diver. He was hitting Pompeii to especially see if their are any remnants of Pink Floyd use of the space. Marina helped us get our tickets and soon we were on our tour. The city of Pompeii is very ancient and wow so beautiful. The destruction of the city in AD 79 was in a way a blessing for future generations. The thick volcanic ash that covered the city preserved much of it's beauty. I was astonished at the level of detail that remains in the structure and artwork to this day. The Pompeii Colosseum was part of the tour. Pink Floyd and many other artists put Pompeii on the modern map and there was a significantly sized art exhibit in the walkways of the structure. It was a surprise to see compared to the quietness of the rest of the recovered city. Marina indicated there was still much to recover in the city and the work takes a very long time. She indicated she has friends who are Archaeologists and they are not as well revered nor paid as you would expect. Perhaps it is due to the magnitude of ancient ruins in these older Italian locations. Time was getting short for our return home so we bid farewell to our new friends, gave Marina a nice tip and rushed off to find tickets for a train. We were fortunate the train we wanted was a few minutes late. The tickets were purchased manually and after almost getting on the wrong one we were soon standing on the correct track with many other travelers. A very beat up but working train soon arrived. It was hot, crowded and standing room only but it moved and was cheap. Yay. I love the more local trains on local routes. You get a real sampling of the space. Our train pulled into the station with room to spare. Kinda. Michelle wanted Naples Pizza. Our train was in 30 minutes A little Google search from a restaurant 10 minutes away. Off we go. The pizza took a while to make and cook but we soon had to medium sized pizza boxes in our hands. Our train was waiting and soon we were seated and ready to go. I felt kind of bad with 2 hot pizza's on a car full of people around dinner time. I let the pizza cool a little to minimize the smell. Then OMG yummy pizza.

Back in Roma for a few more days we had time to investigate more sights. The girls visited the Pope's house in Vatican City. I have serious issues with the Roman Catholic Church and choose to show no support. I've learned by now you dont need to spend a cent in these beautiful cities. Just walk in any direction long enough and soon your eyes will fall upon astonishing gifts of beauty. The girls paid a few bucks for a "skip the line" tour of the Coliseum. I paid nothing and walked to/from and around it. It's massive. I'm glad they did get inside as their pics are awesome.

We had some time to plan ahead some Airbnb's. Venice, our next destination was crazy expensive for hostels/hotels wow. Michelle wanted to save money and stay on the Venice mainland. This meant every day we wanted to visit the cool parts of Venice, we would need to take a train. Screw that. A little Airbnb king fu found what looked like a decent hostel like place. The images looked nice. The reviews looked decent. The location looked awesome. It was $60 per person per day. $180 per day all in. Dang. You only live once. It was time to pack our bags and prep for an early departure to Venice. For whatever reason the only decent departure time was 05:35 AM to Venice. We had to get up at 4:00 AM for our final pack. We preordered a larger taxi vehicle just in case one was not to be found super early. Our taxi was bang on time. It was really nice to fly through Roma this early in the morning. You could see everything from completely different eyes. The train station turned out to be closed until 5 AM. We had about 15 minutes standing outside. There were about 10 people waiting for trains. There was a huge number of people sleeping on the streets. It's a great place to escape the rains. The police don't give them a hard time here. That was nice. It looked totally sketchy and unsafe but somehow felt just fine. Once inside we waited for the typical last minute track assignment. Not much was open for snacks or coffee locally but KT and I found a McDonalds to score some items. Soon it was time to gather our stuff and head to our train. This train worked for the whole trip, yay. Our super early departure meant a super early arrival. The trains final stop is Venice S. Lucia, at 09:20 AM. It gave us time to find a hangout, grab some grub and wait for our Airbnb morning check in. It's also a chance to get a glimpse of this cool city. More on that later