In Rome and already lost!

I caught the 10:00 pm flight from Toronto to Frankfurt and had lots of trouble falling asleep on the plane. I only ended up sleeping like 1.5 hours on the 8 hour flight. That’s probably because I was flying economy class and by legs are just too damn long! But it’s no big deal – anyone who knows me knows I can survive on little sleep hehehehe. It was funny though cause there was an old Indian guy sitting behind who kept getting angry at me when I was tossing and turning on my seat. Otherwise the first part of the flight went quite smoothly. Customs didn’t give me or Peter any problems and I watched ‘The Day After Tomorrow’ on the plane - it was ok.
When we got to Frankfurt we had to kill like 4 hours to wait for the switch to Rome, so we went for lunch. I was pretty full but surprisingly enough Peter was not at all. I guess my metabolism has really slowed down a lot in the last few years – though I can still beat anyone in Pizza Hut buffet when I have to! Anyways we went to a restaurant in the airport and then walked around the plaza in the airport for a little while. I’m surprised at how laid back the luggage security was with my handbag, but that’s a good thing of course. When we got on the plane I was surprised that there was no space anywhere up top to put my luggage so I just put it on the food tray in front of my chair. The flight attendants were very relaxed and very good looking too hahahahaha.Now the fun began. We got to Rome – again security was very relaxed and it was an interesting adventure trying to find the rental car booth. Peter’s eye was got irritated for some reason so he was walking quite slow but we were able to find the rental guy and finalize everything for the car. Turns out the car is SUPER nice and much better than I could have imagined for the price we got it for. We got some basic directions from the rental guy to get to the Holiday Inn I had booked and then loaded our luggage into the car. The STUPID GPS was not working for some reason so we had to go by what the guy told us and hope we could get the hotel which was only 14 km away. This is when everything went crazy. I made a wrong turn and missed the Autostrada Rome highway ramp and then went in a circle and ended up on some other highway. We ended up stopping at an Avis rental store somewhere and didn’t get any help cause they didn’t speak English, filled some gas and then drove in a huge circle again…pathetically trying to get back to the airport and start over again! Speaking of which the gas station guy never gave me a receipt and gas is super expensive here. Anyways back to the story we ended up exactly where we were somehow again (near the Avis) and then I saw a Marriott hotel nearby and stopped and asked them to get to the Holiday Inn. They laughed of course but gave me directions. We then were on our way. I was able to make it as close to as within sight towards the hotel but then went in some weird circle (they’re a lot of those in Rome!) and ended up on some other highway! Luckily somehow the GPS started working and it gave us directions (though somewhat inaccurate) to get back to the Hotel. After at least 2 hours of mindless driving we were able to get to the hotel which was only 14 km from the airport! Once we got there we unpacked and figured let’s go look around for dinner nearby. Since we were going to look for somewhere close we didn’t bother bringing the GPS – big mistake! I drove onto the loopy road thing again and accidentally ended up on the circular Rome highway again. This time though we recognized things quite a bit (since we drove by them like 10 times earlier) and we were able to get back to the hotel. I then drove on the loop road again and didn’t go on the highway. We drove around nearby and couldn’t find anything to eat. It was getting very late now so we just went to the hotel bar and had some cheese sandwiches. This ends my first day in Rome… I still don’t have internet working though.