Arrivo in Italia

The night on the plane went fairly quickly.......you needed to keep the shades down because it started to get light about 4 or 5 hours into the flight!  We probably managed about two hours of sleep each.....in spurts.  We landed in Rome at around 11:30, which was 5:30 AM to us.  Everything seemed to go smoothly as we got off the plane on the tarmac and boarded one of several buses.  We then saw multiple buses leaving other planes that had just landed.  By the time we got to the main terminal, there were throngs of people headed in.  We will not dwell on this, but give a short description of how we spent the next four hours in Fiumicino Airport-

• one hour waiting in line to get through passport control

• one hour looking for our bags that were mistakenly sent to the wrong luggage carousel
• two hours (+15 minutes) waiting painfully in the rental car center for Avis to process over 100 rentals......and nothing is automated.

Enough of the 'arrival pain,'  probably just the price of admission!  A bit of early payback.  In any case, we finally got a car and headed out of town ASAP.  We headed north and made it to our hotel, Hotel Torre di Cala Piccola, on the hillside above Porto Santo Stefano.  It is quite an amazing place, with a dramatic (less than well-paved) mountain road to get there. 

 

We arrived in time for an aperitivo and snacks on the garden terrace to watch the sun set.  Our room is amazing with a huge terrace overlooking the mountains and the Tyrrhenian Sea.  The weather cleared up a bit during the afternoon and was beautiful with some dramatic clouds as the sun went down. 

We had dinner at the restaurant.......ate way too much and faded very fast as the evening advanced through five courses.  We almost fell asleep at the table!  Went back to the room and were asleep in 5 minutes........and slept 10 hours!