Black Friday

We woke up to rain and planned on a quite day (11/29 Thursday). Luckily I had been forming a friendship with our landlord for the Atrani apartment via email (via email because he left for Rome the morning after we arrived) and we had a couple exchanges back and forth, then he sent an urgent message. There was going to be a transportation strike on Friday (Black Friday) and we would have a difficult time getting to Rome. Antionio and his mother gave us some options on travel and we decided our best option was to leave Atrani a day early to go to Rome. This allowed us to get here before the strike and we would have only spent the day in the apartment for the most part due to the rain. To our surprise, Antonio’s mother bought us bus tickets and she met us walking to the bus. We can not say enough kind words about Antonio and his mother as they went above and beyond what anyone else would have.

We caught the bus after standing in the rain for 10 minutes and then were not able to get 2 seats because the junior high kids were going home for the day on the same bus. After an hour, we got to Salerno and luckily the bus driver assumed we wanted to go to the train station and told us when to get off as it turns out the bus stops a couple of blocks from the station when it is going in this direction. We had a short window of time to get our tickets and thought we were not going to make the train as a guy in front of us seemed to be doing some complex transaction and there was only one window open. We made the train with a few minutes to spare.

Once we got on the train we started looking in the guide books to pick out a few hotels to try since we our apartment rental did not start until the next night. We left the station and headed to our first choice hotel, they were booked for the night and did not take dogs. They did allow us to use their phone and my next choice was available and accepted dogs. We made our way over and got checked in. Did I mention, it was raining in Rome also.

We went to a pizzeria from the guidebooks called Est! Est! Est! which turned out to be pretty good and they allowed Parilla to dine with us. We had a traditional appetizer of tomato risotto and cheese chunks that are rolled into a ball, breaded, and fried. We also had fried zucchini flowers which once we started eating them we discovered they were stuffed with cheese and anchovies. Both were pretty good. After appetizers, two pizzas and ½ liter of wine the entire bill was only 25 euro. A pretty good deal these days. After dinner we walked over by the Coloseum a then up the street with the apartment. We slept pretty well as it had been a very hectic day.

Sorry No pics this time. :(