Rome with Noah, Troy and Momma: One Night in Rome Pg3

Morning in Piazza della Rotonda | Pantheon
View from hotel room balcony at Pantheon Royal Suite

After one night in Rome, we had to leave the next morning for Venice. This is our adventure that morning leaving Rome (it always seems to be an adventure for us).

We woke refreshed from our previous two days of a 9-hour flight and leisurely walking self-tour of the streets surrounding the Pantheon. The Pantheon Royal Suite hotel does not have a restaurant but just outside the front entrance is a great little breakfast place with outdoor seating (tent-covered) right on Piazza della Rotonda. While lunch and dinner meals can be pretty pricey (maybe it is the wine), breakfast was very reasonably priced and delicious.

Morning balcony view of Piazza della Rotonda

Pantheon (Not many people in the morning) | Noah
Morning view from our hotel room balcony.

Annette (Momma) and Troy
Balcony window over Piazza della Rotonda

Momma and Troy looking out hotel balcony
Piazza della Rotonda | Pantheon Fountain

Momma, Troy, Noah
Hotel room balcony view of Pantheon Fountain

After breakfast and as leaving the hotel, I made a very important mistake for the day. I asked the hotel desk clerk about a taxi to the train station. She nicely replied, 'Termini'. I took it as a translation deal where she was translating my 'station' into 'termini' for 'terminal'. This was not the case, but nothing either of us said in our brief exchange brought this to light. She went on to tell me that there was a taxi line just to the right of the Pantheon. I thanked her and left the hotel with my new understanding that instead of 'station' I should say 'termini' (not a correct assumption and it made a world of difference for us in just an hour or so later).

We did find several taxis in line next to the Pantheon, but the Pantheon doors were open so we all walked inside before we left. Momma and Troy went first while I watched our luggage on the sidewalk. I went next while Momma and Troy watched our bags. It is a truly impressive building, rich in history, no interior lighting except for the oculus high overhead. I love that it is still used today and found it interesting that it was filled with water, the water frozen and the whole interior used as an ice skating rink at one time. Enjoy these pictures and video and then I'll get to the 'termini' situation.

Pantheon entrance

This video is a little choppy and just audio noise, but it shows me walking into the Pantheon and pans around the chamber and shows the oculus at the top of the dome as well. Really beautiful architecture and murals.

After leaving the Pantheon, we got in our taxi and I asked the driver to take us to the train station, "train termini" (traveling music please). It did not take us long at all to get to the train termini. We paid the taxi driver, unloaded our luggage and entered the termini. In searching for our train to Venice, a little old local man asked if he could help us. I said no; but after I failed to find our train, my mother insisted we ask him (as he had been lurking just behind us as he surely recognized us as lost tourists). Turns out that Rome has numerous train stations and this particular one was named "Roma Termini"... which was not the station our train was leaving from. My assumption that the hotel front desk clerk had merely been correcting my Italian or had been mistaken in her attempt at English was immediately apparent to me (although I did not discuss it with my mother or brother until maybe half way into our train ride to Venice).

Our elderly local guide quickly escorted us to a connecting bus pick-up point just outside of the Roma Termini. Lucky us, it immediately started to torrentially started to rain cold sheets of rain. We had two umbrellas and jackets and we tried to use them as best we could for the three of us and our elderly guide. We waited and we waited. Every bus that came up was not the correct bus. Our guide eventually decided we could not wait for a bus any longer for fear of missing our train so he rushed us back to the Roma Termini station and down into the subway station where he, amazingly, got us onto a subway train and pointed out the correct train station for us. He did not get on the subway train with us. I offered him a twenty, but he looked on that with disgust, so I doubled it and then doubled it again. It didn't matter. We were on our way to a train that we absolutely had to catch and he had been probably our only hope of making it. Thank you, sir. Thank you.

I cannot possibly express enough how distressful all of this nearly-missing-a-train stuff is to our mother. Momma, understandably, hates it. Momma, I sincerely apologize and am trying my best to avoid these Missions-Impossible-type-situations in the future.

At least, we had a long and relaxing train ride to Venice for our next touring vacation stop. Of course, that has its own adventure stories.