Day 19 – Rome/Ancona

Today was very stressful and difficult but had a happy ending. We left our hotel after breakfast (we were glad to be leaving the area it was in) and dropped our bags at the station.

We had until about 3.00pm to explore some more of Rome. We decided to visit the last few highlights in the guidebook and walked to the Trevi fountain. The fountain is an elaborate front to one of the city’s many palazzos and was well worth the visit. We had to resist the urge to jump in though as it was very hot again.

We then proceeded up Rome’s main shopping streets past the Spanish Steps, another couple of palazzos and up to the large park to the north of the centre with great views of the city.

For lunch we went to a trendy pizzeria which was worthy of our last meal in Rome. I ordered a Hawaiian pizza expecting ham and pineapple but it seems the Italian idea of Hawaiian is a little different to Pizza Hut’s consisting of rocket, sweetcorn and prawns – it was still very nice though.

A leisurely walk balk to the train station followed where a nightmare was about to unfold. We got on our Eurostar train which looked like the first Eurostar train ever and appeared to have no air conditioning or opening windows so was hotter than outside. All was fine until shortly after we left the station when an announcement was made. Apparentlz very few people on the train spoke or understood English and it took a while for us to work out that there was a fire on the track between Rome and Ancona so we would have to catch a bus part of the way.

After this there was much confusion about exactly which station the bus was to go from but our fears were reduced when the train stopped unexpectedly at an unscheduled station. Another announcement followed.

This time in our desperation Emma managed to find someone who spoke English who told us that there was another fire on the track for which we were waiting to clear. An hour later and the train still hadn’t moved.

Suddenly everybody left the train and it was only due to our acquaintance who came back to explain the situation that we left at all. He said that the train was returning to Rome and that there was a bus waiting to take us to another station where a further train would take us to Ancona.

By this point all our hopes of catching an earlier ferry had been dashed – there was no way we could make it.

The bus took us past the fire – we could see why the track was closed – and then to another station. We waited here for a good while before they decided which train we should board. In this time we managed to find some more English speakers – a South African and an English couple, one of whom was an Anglo-Italian translator.

Eventually we boarded the train and after another hour we were back on our way. At about 9.30 (after 6 hours traveling) we arrived in Ancona. Thankfully, Gabrielle, our original helper led us to the hotel in which he was staying where he knew the owners. He was obviously a clever guy, about 22, studying economics at Rome and speaker of 4 languages!

Unbelievably luckily for us he managed to get us a discounted rate (70 Euros from 95) for a room with breakfast in the 3-star hotel. Bearing in mind that we were expecting to have to spend the night in the ferry port and we wouldn’t have even found that in the dark on our own, we were extremely lucky. At least we have somewhere comfortable to sleep and have a nice hot shower!