My bruises have bruises. I'm blaming the cheerleading. Review writing is a whole lot less dangerous....
My bruises have bruises. I'm blaming the cheerleading. Review writing is a whole lot less dangerous.
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Rome has two international airports but you don’t usually get a choice of which to fly into or out of – if it’s a budget flight you’re on, it’s almost guaranteed that this will be the one you use.
Although Caimpino is within the city limits of Rome, taxis to and from the place attract a surcharge. A typical one-way fare is 50 Euros including tip, or about 30 GBP, for a 20-30 minute trip. This isn’t cheap so, if you arrive or depart during the day, public transport might be a better option. From the center of the city, you can take the underground (line A) until Anagnina, and then the CORTAL bus to the airport itself. This is only an option from around 9am until 11pm. There’s also a Ryanair bus to and from Termini station – anyone can take it, though priority is given to those traveling with this airline. With departures scheduled to coincide with flight arrivals, it drops off at the back of the station, so walk round the building to find the entrance (to the main station and underground) and
the taxi rank for onward journey to your hotel. This is the cheapest option, costing 8 Euro per person one-way, or 12.50 Euro return, and tickets can be bought from the stall in the arrivals hall. We took the bus to the city on arrival and one thing I would say is to get on it as soon as possible – we grabbed the last couple of seats, but then remained in the coach park for another 20 mins or so while more people clambered aboard. I got the impression that they were only willing to set off when every possible cm of the bus had someone squashed into it.
We had an 8.40am flight which meant a roughly 7am check in – after an annoying time in Pisa where no one appeared for us to check in with until about an hour and a half before the flight, I’ve now learnt my lesson, and know that the “minimum 2 hours before” rule doesn’t apply with Ryanair departures from non-UK cities at silly times of the morning. The airport was quiet when we got there, and very few of the shops and cafes were open. There was however a nice little snack bar that’s open the same hours as the airport itself, offering croissants and pastries and hot and cold drinks to those who were up too early to breakfast in the hotel. Nearby there was also a (closed) snack bar offering pizza and pasta during the main part of the day. This snack bar was in the check in area, but there was also an identical one once we’d gone though passport control.
Airside there was also a very small parade of shops that would have sold us newspapers, gifts, souvenirs and so on, had they been open. They still weren’t, even as we were boarding, around 8.30am. We flew back on a Saturday, too, and it seemed odd that they were still closed at this point, given the fact that we weren’t the only flight leaving at that time, and they would certainly have had a queue of people had they opened up. Needless to say the newsagents at Hahn did great business that morning when we landed. The one shop in Rome that was open was a “duty free” place – though obviously not duty free for us as we were flying EU -> EU. This housed an interesting mix of Italian food (olive oil, cheeses and meat) and internationally branded chocolates and sweets (including their almost namesake, Campino, which I personally think they should have been giving out free when you arrived just, y’know, because) plus the ubiquitous toys and alcohol. The airport was going through a Euro crisis while I was there (as was the city itself) with very few coins available for change. I bought things costing 9.90 EUR but due to the lack of change somehow got them for 9 even though they could happily have kept my entire 10 EUR note. The Germans on our flight (it was going to Frankfurt) weren’t as lucky with their booze buying though, and ended up leaving half of what they wanted behind, because they couldn’t give exact enough change. It was very, very odd.
There was no evidence of personality or local influences anywhere in the building – looking at it you’d have no idea in which continent you were, let alone which country. If there’s a factory out there that produces ready-made airports then it seems that people of Rome have found it. Past the shops airside was a big room with clear plastic walls dividing us up into cattle style pens. There was nothing else there, and the view (of the empty runway) was rather uninspiring. There were lots and lots of seats though, enough for quite a few of our flight to curl up on to catch up on some sleep without leaving any others standing. The toilets were excellent, and there were, again, a stupidly huge number of these. It might have been because we were the first flight leaving that morning, but they were some of the nicest, cleanest airport loos I’ve ever been in.
It’s a small place but this has the advantage that you can’t get lost there. And, you never have to walk far – it’s more a “round the corner” place than a “15 minutes along this corridor” one – at Frankfurt last week I had to walk for ages after landing to get to baggage claim, but here it’s a case of passing past the immigration types and rounding a corner to get to the conveyer belts. The facilities are nothing special, but if it’s a choice of flying budget here or full-fare to Fiumicino then I know which one I’d choose – you end up saving money twice, firstly on the flight and then by them having nothing to spend it on at the airport when you leave, and what could be better than that?
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Advantages: Friendly staff, easy to go through, close to Rome Disadvantages: Few shops/cafes, getting back there from Rome can be a bit more complicated.
Stevoz 05.06.2007 (05.06.2007)
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