On Wednesday night, Nick and I boarded a train in Munich that would take us all the way to Rome. We had two bunks in a six bunk compartment that wound up only having four people in it. The bunks were a little on the hard side, but overall it was a pretty peaceful ride, and we arrived in Rome 12 hours later more or less refreshed.

Our attempts to find a couch to surf in Rome had so far been futile -- demand is much greater than supply -- so the first order of business was figuring out where we would stay. We plunked ourselves and our backpacks down at a cafe with free WiFi, had a couple cappuccinos and croissants (called cornetto in Italy), and set to work. Unfortunately, it turned out to be too last minute to rent an apartment, so we went to Plan C: wander around until we found a hotel. Three or four hotels later, we wandered into Hotel Ferraro, on the second floor of an old building with a rickety elevator and marble windowsills and stairs (everything in Italy seems to be made of marble, right down to the curbstones).

The Italian woman working there only spoke Italian, but we miraculously understood her anyway. After consulting a complicated chart on a piece of paper (despite the fact that there was a computer right in front of her) she informed us that yes, she did have a room available, and for a very reasonable rate. We put down our bags, which were getting pretty heavy, and decided to stay a while.

The next two days, we tried out various coworking spaces around Rome, in between eating lots of good food (Nick had spaghetti three meals in a row, they were all good.) We also saw plenty of ruins (they're everywhere) and walked up the Capitoline Hill. Neither coworking space quite fit though, so we decided to make Saturday our last day in Rome, and then head North out of the city.

Saturday we saw a lot, and walked even more -- partially because we got lost a few times, and partially becuase we kept trying to get away from all the other tourists. We had gelato twice, and finished up with a very nice Roman dinner -- including Saltimboca and Carciofi (artichokes) a la Romana, probably the tastiest meal yet.

Sunday morning it was off to the train station to pick up our rental car. Sounds easy enough, considering we had reserved it in advance. We got to the rental car counter and there was a fairly long line -- what looked like five parties ahead of us -- but we were an hour early, so I wasn't too worried.

An hour later, we were still standing in the same place.

The sole woman working at the rental car counter was entirely unconcered that she'd kept several customers waiting over an hour. She continued plodding through the people in front of us at a glacial pace.

When it was finally our turn, it became clear why the line was moving so slowly. Not only does renting a car in Italy require enough documentation to buy one in the U.S. (among other things, our not having plane tickets home required special permission from some central office somewhere) but the woman renting it to us couldn't be bothered to utter any more words than absolutely necessary.

Eventually though, we got the keys to a little black Fiat Panda. We got lost getting out of Rome, of couse, but once we were on the road it was beautiful -- all rolling hills and precarious-looking hilltop towns. And we didn't get lost once! Once we got to Perugia of course, it was a different story... but I'll save that one for another day.