ROMA

Two hours later I land in Rome Italy ready for new adventures. Dragging my hand carry out, I manage to spot Passport control. The entire process is quite quick and hola I'm in Roma...

I walk out to spot the perfect candidate for a horror movie. All she needs is a knife drippig in blood! (Special thanks to the bitch slapping Italiano for the quote). It's Lucy standing in the middle of Rome Airport, frustrated as hell after what she has been through. The fact she spent hours waiting for me hasn't helped.

I'm too scared to hug her as she may poke a knife into my back. After a quick hugging session Lucy panics when she realises she never got her passport stamped. In fact she claims she didn't even see passport control. Who the hell doesn't go through passport control????

We decide to do this scooby doo style and split up. Lucy races off to find passport control or anyone to get a stamp while I walk over to the nearest counter to ask about shuttle buses. I have a prebooked apartment but the only issue is getting to it right now.

We were supposed to meet the woman earlier in the afternoon but with my flight getting delayed every second it was now 7pm. Let's hope this woman understands wog time. Apparently Lucy called to inform her that my flight was delayed and that we would get to the accomodation late but the woman only spoke in Italian. Hence we had a major communication problem.

So here I am standing at the counter asking the woman if their shuttle buses go to this apartment when she starts yelling at me that their shuttle buses only do hotels and not apartments. For fucks sake anyone would have thought I asked her to empty her purse and give me all her money.

Being dead exhausted due to lack of sleep last night I was in no condition to argue. The woman claimed she can get us a taxi for a set price of 75 Euros. This is when Lucy wandered back and we some how accepted the offer without thinking.

Who the hell accepts 75 Euros for a cab ride? That's 150 bucks the minute we land here. It was either that or waiting for a shuttle bus that would take 2 years getting to our apartment. None of us were in the mood to wait around any longer. We hit the cab.

The cab pulls in front of some run down apartment block in some back alley way of Rome. Here I am thinking this should be interesting. We jump out of the cab and I help the cab driver unload the suitcases. Here I am again trying to decide do I tip or not. It's a set price so does that mean tip included? I had a major drama in Amercia a few years back when the old guy started screaming that I didn't tip him because I thought it was a set price. Anyway I decide not to risk another dramas and end up handing over 80 Euros. Shit that's $160 AU spent already.

So were dragging our suitcases to the apartment when I notice a guy holding the door for us. At first I thought he was the owner to the apartment I had booked. So for some reason Lucy and I decide to follow him, his wife and two kids.

Along the way Lucy questions whether we are just following a random family to their apartment. This is when it clicks to me that maybe the guy was just being polite and holding the door open for us. What does he get in return? Us following him into his apartment! LOL

We stand outside the apartment arguing about this when the guy waves for us to follow him in. Thank god, were following the right people. I decide to let Lucy go first as I have too many suitcases. Now the front door has two doors and the guy has only opened the right hand side of the door. So Lucy is trying to enter with her suitcase and hand carry when some how she manages to drop her suitcase. The suitcase hits the door as it falls over and the door goes slamming against the wall. I'm in shock thinking were going to get evicted for that before even settling into the apartment.

Lucy's quickly grabs her suitcases and apologies for the scene she just caused. Meanwhile I'm strolling in and notice the massive dent in the wall. This can't be good!

We leave our suitcases by the door as the Italian family decides to give us a tour of the apartment. The entire tour was given in Italian. It's not like either one of us have perfect Italian. If there was a time I needed the bitch slapping Italiano it was now. We just kept nodding to what ever the woman said as if we understood. We understood shit all LOL We managed to capture the important stuff.

Now we headed back to the dining table to sort out payment with the Italian family. We had agreed on a set price for the period we wanted the apartment for with the agent. Fuck if anything actually goes to plan. Here we are arguing the price of the apartment. The woman's speaking a hundred miles an hour in Italian and were pulling out every single email we have to show her the agreement price with the agent.

This is when the woman gets frustrated and makes a call to the agent as we don't understand what she is on about. She spends several minutes on the phone with some random person before passing the phone to Lucy. Lucy tries finding out what's happening and why we are getting screwed yet again. Apparently the guy on the phone didn't even work at the agent. He was some random person off the street that could speak English so they shoved him on the phone.

We decided to stop arguing and just hand over the money. For fucks sake, I just want a decent shower, meal and a bed right now. So we were screwed over again. Once the apartment payment was sorted out the whole security deposit business started. I don't blame them for wanting a security deposit after Lucy stormed in here like it was the formula one race. They wanted 300 Euro's as a security deposit. Shit that's like 600AU. This just keeps getting better and better.

After discussing this, well they rambled on in Italian & we tried answering, they decided to wave the 300 Euro deposit and left the apartment with their kids. For a minute I thought we were going to inherit the kids.

So what's the apartment like? It's bloody huge. It apparently fits like 8 people. Don't ask me why I need such a big apartment. I suppose I need the room with all the luggage.

The below picture is the dining room meeting the living room:

Below picture is the living room. Note the 1950's TV...

The kitchen was a good size....

While snooping around we discovered that they hadn't unlocked two of the rooms. This kind of freaked me out. It's like 2 hidden rooms in the apartment. Almost feels like I'm playing with Big Brother and they are watching us.

Lucy heads to the shower while I settle into my room. My room is dark and gloomy. It almost freaks me out with the lack of light. Meanwhile I have some weird painting in my room that looks like two indians gropping each other. Fuck if I know what that is about.

Lucy comes screaming out of the shower that the shower head is completely fucked and she has flooded the bathroom. I decide to enter the bath to see what the hell she is on about. The shower head sprays water backwards instead of forward. You get water spraying out in all directions.

The worst part is there is no shower curtain to maintain the water in the bath tub. By the time you finish having a bath the entire room is flooded. The only way possible to avoid this issue is to not use the shower head and simple use the bath tub tap. Mind you trying to squeeze under the tap is a challenge. Feeling frustrated I have a one minute shower and walk out as the hot water has gone as well.

Meanwhile Lucy has successfully caused another scene by dropping her perfume bottle and smashing it into 50 thousand pieces just outside the bathroom. While she is on the floor cleaning I decide to start filming it for my amusement. Lucy cracks and starts screaming at me to turn the camera off before she smashes it.

Before I forget the toilet doesn't flush probably. You have to spend 5 minutes pumping water by slamming the tank button until water starts to flow in. It's worst than a gym work out. Honestly it makes you think twice before going to the toilet as it's a huge task getting water to flush. It's easier to do a cycle class at the gym.

We tried turning the TV on to see if it works when we realised we had no reception. I suppose a TV that was saved from world war 2 wouldn't. It wouldn't worry me so much if we didn't have to sell a kidney to pay for this apartment!

We decide to go hunting for food as by this stage were dying of hunger. We walk out of the apartment building when Lucy almost steps into dog shit. Now that would have topped it all! Within a few minutes we realised we chose the shittest area in Rome to live in. This reminds me of when I was in LA. We booked a hotel in downtown LA with all the mexcians. Not a smart move haha

We do a quick lap and spot a local bar to buy some water as the supermarket has closed for the night. This is when we spot the metro and decide to check timetables. No timetables are present but we spot a pay phone. It's a much needed requirement at the moment. Payphone equals a call to Christine for stress relief.

Christine apparently made it clear that her work phone was set up on voicemail and it would be in the living room at nights so if we needed to make any abusive phone calls to her it was ready to go straight into her voicemail.

So here we are using the phone card that Lucy brought at the airport, dialing 830 numbers to get to Christine. Finally it starts ringing and Christine actually answers. What the fuck? Who the hell answers their phone at 4am after convincing us that she had the perfect set up??? It's bad enough we just splashed all this money on a cab ride and a broken apartment but now were spending dollars on the phone with Christine!

Walking out of the metro we decided to pick a random local restaurant to eat at. We were starving by this stage. We walk into this Italian restaurant and it feels awkward at first as there is no waiters around. Finally we pick a table to settle down in.

While picking our meals we hit the breadsticks on the table one after the other. Lucy pre plans to smuggle some into her bag later.

We were both quite ill due to all the weather change so we decide to start our first Italian meal with a vegetable soup. The waiter brings over two plates of vegetable soup and dumps them in front of us. Now words can not describe how good this soup was. In fact it was so good we actually questioned why it was so good!

We were sipping away on our soup, when we saw a waiter wheeling around a trolley to another table with their food on it. Before I could say a word Lucy started screaming "WHY DIDN'T WE GET A TROLLEY??". It scares me that I was actually thinking that as well. Were so fucked in the head that something so stupid like this turns into a major laughing fit and of course a major issue.

We spend the next 5 minutes discussing why we were not trolley worthy. Yes we have been watching Seinfield too much. But seriously we were not trolley worthy. What's wrong with us? Who wouldn't want to give us a trolley. Every other tom, dick and harry managed to get served with a trolley, why didn't we?

Lucy comes up with a plan that we have to keep ordering food until they bring the trolley out to us. Luckily for us they bring our next meals on the trolley. Otherwise we would have spent an arm and a leg. I can't believe we were not trolley worthy.

Below picture is a view of the restaurant:

Our mains arrive and I order lemon chicken with Spinach. The meals were quite yummy but when we realised how much this was costing us we were ready to throw it back up. We spent close to 100AU on that meal including the tip. Italy's going to suck up money if we keep spending like this. It's a good thing that Lucy has pocketed some of the breadsticks!

Feeling abit satisfied with food in our stomach we head back to the apartment. We get ready for bed when I manage to step on a piece of broken glass outside of the bathroom. Great now I have a bleeding toe.

I settle into my bed and pass out feeling dead exhausted.

OMG I'm in ITALY!