Buongiorno Roma

Rome was one of the top destinations I had in mind when I was planning a short vacation for the Christmas break. Although I had been to Rome once in 2009, it was a very busy business trip and I had only a few hours which was certainly not good enough to see anything in the city. Booking mid-November (using once again my favorite booking site, travelnow.com, I could not know what the weather would be like, but my expectation for that season was a mild winter with around 10 degrees and some rain.

How mistaken could I be! Just before we left for Rome from Amsterdam via Munich, Europe plunged into a severe winter, snow crippling transportation everywhere. In the two days before our flight, maybe 60% of all flights from Amsterdam was cancelled. Germany was hit especially bad. When our Lufthansa flight left Amsterdam and arrived in Munich more than an hour late, our fate was sealed.

When we landed in Munich our flight time had already passed, so we went to the Lufthansa Service Centre and found a queue which went far outside the normal service area. Everyone with delayed and cancelled flights were trying to rebook. Lufthansa did not do a very good job of managing the situation, so people were just walking in the area without necessarily taking their place in the queue. After a while Lufthansa officials limited the chaos by securing the area with barriers, but it was just too crowded. After 3.5 hours of waiting in line, we were re-booked to another flight to leave in half an hour.

Although it was a tight fit, I thought we would make it and maybe also our bags, since the Lufthansa official "transferred" our bags to the new flights on the computer.

After a short flight - which was delayed even from the new schedule - we were in Rome, but of course our bags did not turn up. By the time I registered the 4 bags as missing - one per person - found a taxi and arrived at the Hotel Delle Muse it was almost midnight - around 12 hours after we left home - and we had no bags. Since there was not much to do at that time of night and also we were hungry after so many hours of waiting at the airport (and with the terrible tiny sandwiches provided by Lufthansa during the flight to Rome) we went out to find a place to eat. In any other country this might have been a challenge, however in Italy restaurants can be open till late.

The hotel is in the north of the city in a quiet residential area, a bit far from the popular tourist destinations. Close by is the Piazza Ungheria where we found Taverna Rossini and noticed with joy that it was open until 2 a.m.

The menu was OK, and we had pizza. The trip back to the hotel on foot helped digest this late-night dinner. OK, this was not the best welcome a city had offered me, but there was hope that it would get better.