And so it begins! I woke up at 3:00 AM (I felt horrible - I only had 3 hours of sleep and I feel like I am getting sick) and took a taxi to a bus station. As stupid as that sounds, the Underground wasn't running at that time, there was a Tube strike scheduled for today, and today was Boxing Day (the day after Christmas is a holiday in the UK as well), so I had really had no choice. The bus was supposed to take us from West Brompton Bus Station to Gatwick Airport with plenty of time to spare before the flight, but the unthinkable happened - the bus broke down about 2/3 of the way there! We were stuck in the middle of nowhere and couldn't get any reception with our phones, so we waited for over an hour in the bitter cold for another bus to arrive. I managed to get to the airport but had to rush through check-in and security; I barely managed to make it through the gate before it closed.
Once I arrived at the gate, however, there were delays and I ended up having to stand in line for about an hour. After we boarded, there were additional delays, but once we got into the air, it was smooth sailing and we arrived in Rome only about a half an hour late. I thought I was having a really crappy day, but it turns out that a fellow LSE student I met on the bus (small world, I guess) had it even worse - in addition to all the drama I experienced, he had to deal with the airline losing his luggage! I wish him the best of luck...
I met my brother at the airport and we took a train to Central Rome. Once we got off, we had a hard time finding our hotel, but managed to do so after walking around for quite some time and asking locals for directions in very bad Italian. We were both very exhausted (I had never been so exhausted in my life!) and although we had planned to do some sightseeing on the first day, we passed on that and just rested. Since it was the 26th (also a national holiday in Italy) many restaurants were closed, but we were able to find a decent restaurant that was open and have our first taste of authentic Italian food.
