Rome

Spanish Steps - The people here were endless
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After a day of taking it easy and walking around Rome seeing the Spanish Steps and doing some more shopping (one can never have too many handbags!!), we have our last dinner in Rome in a small trattoria and head back to our room. The next morning we pack and after breakfast head for the airport, sharing a car with two other Aussies from Perth who are heading home. At the airport we find that our check-in desk is number 248 - and head that way to check our bags for our Air-Berlin flight to Vienna. The gate is not open yet and we tag on the end of a sad excuse for a line - really just a lump of people crowding around gates 247 and 248. Then some people come and make a second "line" for gate 248. I move into this line and Joe stays with the other crowd just to cover our bases. Finally the counters open and 248 is setup for gold card Air-Berlin members only, so the late group that started the second line just shimmies over "merging" with the original group who had been waiting for at least 20 more minutes then us, and could have been quite a bit longer. Things get heated and a lot of frustrated Germans and Austrians are yelling at each other - the lady behind me yells out "Don't let them in".. I have visions of another Venice and wonder if another fist-fight is in order. Finally the late group just pushed in and the line got moving. Luckily this time there was no excess baggage to pay and Joe and I went in search of a club lounge to wait out the 1 hr till boarding. The flight was ok - only took about an hour twenty minutes. At the airport I see a sign advertising the city-train for 9 euro for a 16 minute ride - non-stop to the city. We decide to do this and have a great quick ride into Vienna. As soon as we get out of the train station we see a sign saying our hotel is straight ahead!! This turned out to be really good as we literally just walked across the road and checked into our hotel.

We stopped at the Pantheon for a quick Maccas cheeseburger!! Right there in the forecourt!
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I'm still not feeling great, but we decide we cannot sit in the room, so we go for a roam for about 3 hrs. Joe wanted to do some work with net access, so we sat in the lobby bar for a couple of hours enjoying some overpriced drinks and "complimentary" nuts and crackers. We head back, have some room service for dinner (we seem to be in a very commercial part of town as there are not a lot of restaurants close by).

Arevaderchi Roma