ROME is now available, this week's Check-In/Check-Out Diary at INeedAHoliday.co.uk.

Excerpt from Rome:

With multiple maps and books in hand we head off toward The Spanish Steps.  We are lost within minutes.  Not “we missed a street” lost.  We have lost all sense of direction lost.  We hail a taxi and she drives us (fast) to The Spanish Steps.  We take pictures and then find a wine bar where I attempt to practice my Italian and order a Cappuccino and two glasses of wine. “Un Cappuccino y due biccheire vino de bianco?”  It is an utter failure; the waiter corrects every word and repeats my order in English.  I have a minor anxiety attach, drink my wine, and grade myself an F.

Next we walk to Trevi Fountain, getting turned around only once, making the ten minute walk into an easy twenty minutes, looking for taxis along the way.  Pictures are taken and coins are flipped into the postcard worthy fountain.  Something we learn quickly is that wherever there is water or a fountain of some sort they have you flipping coins “in hopes you will come back soon”.  It’s like a tourism tax.  We are hungry so we find a local pizzeria that caters to tourists and allows me to rape their language as we order wine and pizza.  What’s nice about ordering a Margarita Pizza in Italian is that it translates to Margarita Pizza!  After a liter of wine and so-so tourist pizza and meeting many other Americans who also found the touristy pizza joint we attempt to find the Hard Rock Café, because we have a pin collector in the family.  For those of you not familiar with Hard Rock pin collectors it’s a lot like a crack addict, the one exception being you don’t get a moment of “AH!”.  We walk and walk.  We are lost, again.  We pass a street named Cappuccino four times until we finally find the HRC, go in buy the pin and leave. 

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Rome is the leg from David S. Grant's new book: The Italia Diary: A Travel Narrative with Inspired Fiction COMING SOON!

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