4-6 July 2010 Ancona to Rome

4-6 July 2010 Ancona to Rome (train)

Phase two

Come 7.30am the bikes, bags and ourselves were on the train waiting patiently for departure, some 50 minutes away - anyone would think we weren’t keen on Ancona!  Technically that’s not fair, as I’m sure they have a nice city centre and we just happened to see it’s ‘not so good’ side.

Four hours later we arrived in Rome after seeing some lovely scenery on the way.  Again we had a hotel close to the train station and again it was a pretty shitty part of town. 

However the hotel (4 star) was nice enough.  Rome was a baking 35c so we grabbed a quick bite to eat and spent the afternoon in our room.

Phase two complete

Rome

Phase three (getting bikes on the plane)

Today we woke up with the mission of finding two bike boxes to pack our bikes.  We spent the good part of two hours trying to source boxes through our airline, airport, other airlines to no avail.  Plan B. With the help of the hotel staff we sourced a bike shop that sold bike cartons.  The bike shop I worked in we gave them away so I was suspicious of what they had exactly and didn’t get my hopes up.  So with GPS in hand we set off on our two km journey (it’s was going to be a right royal pain getting them back to hotel).  We found the bike shop easy enough but no cartons, surprise surprise.  However they gave us the address of another shop, another 2km away and no number to call.  Hmmm.  We set off again, in the 35 degree heat in the general direction of the next bike shop.  No more than 200m down the track we walked past the door of Mail Boxes Etc, a Pack ‘n’ Send equivalent.  While they didn’t have bike boxes they had some big boxes that we decided we could fashion into a box of sorts.  Big enough to be a pain in the bum to walk the 2 km back to the hotel.  The afternoon was then spent packing the bikes.

Day 2 in Rome and we thought we’d better catch some of the sights.  We were due to fly out at 10pm that day so we had the day to fill in.  I don’t think Gary could of cared less but not being impressed with Rome so far I thought we’d better check out down town.

So off we set, in the 35 degree heat and wandered the streets of Rome with 5 million other tourists.  I’m glad to say downtown Rome was an improvement to our area but a combination of the tourists and traffic neither of us are keen to return.

Eventually we moseyed back to the hotel and waited for our chariot.  The taxi arrived on time, we loaded the bikes and sat back for a white knuckled ride to the airport.  At the airport we got the boxes ‘secure wrapped’ for reinforcement and proceeded to check in.  Bikes loaded, all within our weight limit.

phase three complete