Western Europe Trip Completion

I didn't know how tired I was until we hit the A1 freeway heading to Rome. I wasted quite sometimes to get the correct direction using only sign language. The guy was really helpful even though neither of us understood the other ... :-)

It was about 2 hours and 30 minutes of fast driving to get to Rome. We stopped at a gas station lying right next to the freeway to fill up the gas tank and grab some snacks and drinks.

Gas was very expensive here during our stay. Before we left home gas price hit $3.50 a gallon in the U.S, but it cost 2.2 Euro a liter of gas here. That's equal to about $11.00 a gallon. It's no wonder why I couldn't find a car bigger than a matchbox here. During our 3 hour drive to Rome, there wasn't a single S.U.V or a pick-up truck on the road. All the vehicles here were the teeny tiny 2 to 4 cylinders that's so weak, they couldn't carry much.

After getting closer to Rome, I wasted more than an hour to drive around and around trying to get to the airport with the hope to get the replacement for our broken GPS. It was right there insight, but there wasn't any access to get off the freeway. Soon we got off the freeway, we hit a bunch of roundabouts which brought us right back to the other side of the freeway AGAIN. I did this 4-5 times at least.

In the mean time, the toll kept mounting. The people at those tollbooth offered no help. We found a cop car with a couple of them in it but after 10 minutes, it got us to nowhere. Talk about frustrations.

We finally found a car with bunch of people with their luggage spilling all over their roof. I followed it no matter even I had to weaved in and out of the traffic. And voila, it was exactly what we anticipated. It lead us to the airport terminals.

We didn't get our replacement because they had none. The people spoke English alright but they offered no apologize neither giving a crap that what we wanted to do. I had enough so I return the car right there for 1 day less of charge.

We called a cab to take us to our hotel which was so closed by, less than a couple miles. The hotel we stayed for 1 night there wasn't so great either. It was small, dirty, and very noisy because all of the tourist attractions were surrounding it. We took a shower, grabbed some dinners then hit the bed. We still had sometimes during tomorrow morning before heading home anyways.






View from our hotel in Focene on the last day in Rome. Mediterranean Sea is in the background.