Day 3 - Roma

At 12.55am we boarded our Cathay Pacific flight to Rome.

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Thankfully neither me nor Auke got sick this time! Cathay Pacific flights seem quite fancy - they even give you a printed menu to choose your meals from. Also - we didn’t have to wait hours for our dinner - it got brought out quite quickly.

At one point during the flight Titus got a bit upset. Auke took him for a walk to the back of the plane where all the flight attendants are. When he didn’t return after about half an hour, Ali and the girls went to look for him. It was here that the flight attendants loved the kids so much they were showering them with drinks and snacks and there started taking selfies with them! We ended up spending nearly an hour chatting to the flight attendants in the back. It made the flight go a bit quicker!

The entire flight the girls managed to stay awake until about an hour from the end. Titus was very proud to be the last man standing.

Finally the nearly 13 hour flight was over and the moment Ali never thought she would see happened - we were in Rome!

We were ushered through past at least an hour of queues due to having young children, and were at the baggage collection in no time.

After finding our shuttle driver, we then made the walk to the vehicle. The bags kept dropping off the luggage trolley the whole time and as we were carrying a pram - it kept getting caught on every entrance too! Every time we fixed one bag, more would fall. Eventually the shuttle driver got so sick of it he picked up the baby bag and wore it himself and we made our way to the car (not without Mila falling over on the way right as the pram got jammed in a door)!

We drove to Rome and arrived at our accommodation at around 10.00am. We are right next to the markets which are apparently a popular tourist spot so it was pretty handy! The street is not super busy like some of Rome is!

As check in wasn’t until 10.30 we decided to sit at the cafe downstairs from our place. They had a deal - cappuccino and croissant for 1.80 euros so we enjoyed that. We also ordered gnocchi as Ali had heard it was amazing. It wasn’t until well after she had ordered it and was confused about the weird looks that we realised it’s because we had ordered pasta at 10.30 in the morning! We don’t know if it was just this place or what, but it was not good at all. Neither of us could finish it. At least we could tick trying gnocchi off the list!

When our house was ready for us we brought our bags up and got settled in. From our window we have an amazing view of the San Giovanni Basilica!

We then headed out to try find a tobacconist which is where they sell the metro tickets. On the way we came across the San Giovanni Basilica. We decided to go inside, although with the no speaking sign we were surprised we were allowed in at all with the kids! It was spectacular - the detail inside and out was amazing.

After this we carried on our search for a tobacconist and bought our tickets.

We then stopped for gelato on the way home per the girls request! It was delicious!

We got home and decided we were all too tired to even think about dinner and we were all full from the gelato! The kids and Ali stayed home while Auke picked up a few essentials from the store.

We then all piled into bed exhausted.

Unfortunately we know how to pick the wrong places, because somehow we were at another place that had maintenance above us all the time! They work all the way until 12pm and then start again at around 6am!