Day 4

Today has been a VERY eventful day. We took an early train from Interlaken to Rome. Wow-Italy is so beautiful. While on the train we enjoyed the lovely countryside which looks so much like Napa Valley with plenty of old houses, vineyards, and rolling hills.

Anyways, here's where the story begins-we arrived in Rome around 3pm. We were excited to have the entire afternoon ahead of us to explore this huge city. We walked to our hotel, Hotel Chic and Cheap, which was only about a mile away. When we arrived, there was no hotel to be found. What we found was an old closed down travel agency. Trying to keep our spirits up, we decided to wait for someone to show up while we enjoyed margarita pizza, tortelli, and bruschetta(delicious) at a resturant nearby. Every time someone walked by Hotel Chic and Cheap we would gasp with excitement and nervousness, thinking that person just had to be the owner. Well, we waited and waited. Nothing.

After as much dissapointment as we could handle, we talked to our waitress about our situation. She informed us that Hotel Chic and Cheap is a fake. Wait....WHAT???

Then we were left with the dilema of finding a hotel/hostel within our budget that was available. U2 is having a concert here tomorrow and everything that is semi-affordable is booked to capacity. Not long after we learned about our fake booking, the men in the table next to us had a 3 room apartment booked for us for the night for only 80 euros. What a blessing! That solved our problem for tonight, but we were still stressed about our housing situation for tomorrow. Well, another little angel helped us out and spent a lot of his valuable time on the phone with Orbitz. Now we have a 100% refund from our original hotel booking, 100% refund from our replacement hotel for tongiht, and a 400 Euro room booked for tomorrow, for free of course. Thank you boys at the table next to us, thank you Craig, and thank you Orbitz. You all turned a miserable sitaution into a delightful situation!

ps, we enjoyed the evening in between all of the hotel drama by enjoying our first geloato of the trip, buying a vibrant scarf, and visiting the many hot spots of Rome on a double decker hop-on-hop-off bus. The Trevi Fountain was definitely a highlight and wow-the Colosseum is unreal. It was all really great! We are excited for The Vatican City tomorrow and more wonderful Italian experiences.