Last week Monica and I went off for a short break to Rome. We stayed about a week, landing Tuesday and flying home again on Saturday. I wasn’t expecting much before we flew out there — I’m not really a great fan of travelling and visiting places — but I suppose I would be doing somewhat of an injustice to say that it was as bad as I expected.
Getting from Fiumicino airport south-west of Rome was surprisingly painless (if a little expensive) thanks to the direct train, the Leonardo Express, which takes you right into the city’s main terminus, Roma Termini. We opted to use the automatic ticket machines at the airport which quite happily gave us the option to complete the transaction in English (We did however end up paying for the tickets on a debit card because the machine refused to take our notes, despite promising it would.) From there it was a short hop on the city’s B Metro line to Colloseo and a short walk to the self-catering apartment which we had rented.
We chose to buy the Roma Pass for the week. [read more]
Or, more specifically, does Romania need this cheerleader? Please don’t get me wrong, this isn’t a personal attack on the author. Ethan seems to be nice guy with a genuine love of the country and the girl who has opened his eyes to it. He appears to be humble and willing to accept when his personal knowledge is lacking (the comment and response on this post is a great example). Yet sometimes it feels like the blog strays from light pro-Romania reading, to full on propaganda.
I am in the same situation as Ethan: I’m a 30(ish) year old British guy in a relationship with a Romanian girl, I have been travelling backwards and forwards between Britain and Romania since 2011 and, despite what I was told I would think before I visited for the first time, I really like the country. I understand where he’s coming from. I also recognise that Romania has taken a bit of a beating at the hands of the right-wing media in the UK in recent years (fuelled no doubt by the recent popularity of UKIP), as well as suffering from a lack of high-profile official tourism publicity (when was the last time you saw an advert funded by the Romanian tourist board?). But despite Ethan’s best intentions, does a sickly sweet fansite really achieve anything? [read more]