Arriving at Fiumicino: Experience & Airport Tips
We arrived at the Fiumicino Rome Airport at 8PM and got a taxi from the airport to our hotel on Via Nazionale. The taxi ride from the airport to the hotel was pretty boring for the first 30 minutes. Once we started getting closer to the city center though, we began seeing ruins and, after driving past the Coliseum, we knew we were finally in Rome. Once our taxi driver dropped us off in front of our hotel we were completely on our own. The hotel was very quaint. It had one of those elevators that had multiple doors you had to manually open and close, and it had a statue of some ancient woman at the entrance, I guess you could say it was all very "old Rome". The front desk was run by an Italian man and who I presumed to be his wife. They were both very nice and welcoming, and after checking us in in their reservation book (note that they didn't use a computer), showed us to our room. It was hot in our room because, as I later learned, the Italians are pretty keen on saving energy, so they use appliances, such as air conditioning, very minimally. Thankfully there was an air conditioning system set up in our room which we could control, so the heat wouldn't be a problem for the rest of the trip. Once we settled in, we started writing down our plans for each day of our trip and later went to bed.A couple lessons I learned this day
1. Don't switch up your flight plans 40 minutes before takeoff
2. Apparently, you can take outside food into the airport. I recommend bringing as much food from home as you are going to need to get you through your flight because food prices at the airport are ridiculous and airplane food is grosssss.
3. Don't forget that you filled up your water bottle 30 minutes before you go through TSA, you're going to get stopped and the attendants are going to take an hour to look through your bag until they finally listen to you and agree that yes, it was indeed water that made the sensor go off, and not the cocaine they thought you had hidden in the lining of your backpack...
4. Don't buy three meals at the airport to supply you for a 12 hour flight...you're not going to be that hungry, you're going to be sleeping most of the way (refer back to #2).
5. Airplane food is DISGUSTING...where does it even come from anyway? How long has it been stored in the plane for? Why doesn't it have expiration dates on the packaging??
6. Stay calm, breath. Your luggage is going to make it to the same place you are going. At least I think it will...
7. If you act like a clueless American (because you are a clueless American), German men will laugh at you
8. A lot of people speak English. Thank God a lot of people speak English.
9. Exchange dollars to euros before you arrive in Europe. It is harder to find and ask for the location of the currency exchange booth when you're at an unfamiliar airport.
10. Be ready to pay your taxi driver in cash. In an unlucky case, such as ours, their credit card machine will break and they will be forced to drive you to a sketchy ATM machine at 10PM.
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