WC_EEND

Now, first of all I want to thank sk3 for all the advice he's/she's given me with regards to Rome. I can recommend anyone looking into going to Rome to read his thread about rione Monti in the Italy subforum.

Now, the trip. I wanted to take a trip somewhere with some of my mates before the new academic year started. It was fairly quickly narrowed down to 2 options: Rome or Berlin. Given the fares for Berlin on the dates we wanted (bear in mind I was looking at Easyjet) were through the roof (€300+ return), we quickly went with Rome.

So, after a a few more meetings with regards to where to stay and what to do in Rome, etc we were ready for the off.

So in the early morning of September 9, we made our way to the Gent-Sint-Pieters train station for the beginning of our trip. However, immidiately there was a problem: I had gotten sick the night before. Needless to say, it made the train travel for me pure torture (the 19th century rolling stock used by the NMBS wasn't helping either). I ended up having to throw up twice on the train (after having done so 3 times at home already) and once more at BRU.
Since we went via Mechelen, we used the new 'diabolo' airport link and thus at least it made sense to pay the €4.30 surcharge.
Once at BRU, I didn't even feel like going to Rome anymore. I wanted to just go home and stay in bed.

Security at BRU was quick and painless and we were through in 5mins tops and wade our way to the gate at the beginning of the A-pier. At this point I also bought a bottle of aquarius (which helps if you're feeling sick), which later turned out to be a big mistake.

LH2283
BRU-MUC
Embraer 195
100% loadfactor in Y and C

Not much to say about the flight, it was punctual, aircraft was clean, NEK seats were way too hard. One thing I did find though was that the service was a bit... sterile.

MUC

Aircraft parked at the remote stands, so it was a bus for us, and then we had to find our way around MUC, which thankfully was not that hard at all. We were at our departure gate within about 10mins, which was again a bus gate.

LH1844
MUC-FCO
Embraer 195
Loadfactor around 90%

Same comments from the previous flights apply, however, remember that Bootle of Aquarius I bought at BRU? Well, during this flight I found out it had leaked in my bag (I had verified it was properly closed) and had soaked all of my clothes basically, making an already miserable day even worse.

FCO
Got a finger gate this time and after a quick lav break in the airport we were off looking for the train station which was hidden quite well. After finding it, the ticket machines disagreed with us about buying tickets (got an error in Italian I could not make sense of), so we went to the ticket office and bought our tickets there.
Now, €14 for the Leonardo Express is not cheap by any stretch, but I'd still much rather pay that than I would pay the Diabolo surcharge to the NMBS.
The key difference here is that the Leonardo express are modern, comfortable trains, whereas the NMBS uses their oldest heaps of garbage on airport services.
See for yourself, which one would you rather use?
Leonardo Express:


NMBS Klassiek Motorstel:


See what I mean?

Kevincm

Gotta love those SNCB rustbuckets - especially when paying the Diabolical... I mean Dialbo Charge.

Hope you got better during the trip!

WC_EEND

Termini station

After another quick lav break for me (at the cost of a princely €1) we were off to find the subway station of Termini, which turned out to be easier than expected (I figured if we kept going down, we should basically end up at the subway station at some point).
After avoiding the gypsies at the ticket machines ("I help you", yeah right) and buying the tickets from a machine all Italians appeared to be cueing at we were off on the subway which instantly reminded me of the NMBS trains at home.

above: Old and full of graffiti.

After one stop we got off at Cavour and went looking for our B&B. thanks to sk3's clear instructions this was not hard at all and within a minute we were checking into our B&B. However here a new problem appeared: their machine refused to accept my visa card for payment (I've had this happen in London before and my bank cannot explain why this happens) so after 2 tries I took out my regular bank card which worked fine, so after a short explanation we got into our room (which is also where I stayed for the rest of the day).

Nerva accomodation
The rooms were very comfortable (it was no mr. fancypants hotel, but very good given the price we paid, and we had free wifi which is also a plus). Breakfast, while in a bar across the street, was very nice too (excellent coffee as one can expect in Italy). But I'm getting ahead of myself here. My main priority was damage assesment of my luggage (which turned out to be not that bad, given the amount of liquid that had leaked). So I basically hung out all my clothes spread out as much as possible and made liberal use of the hair dryer that was kindly provided in the bathroom.
at this point my 2 friends accompanying me went out to explore the lovely neighborhood of Monti (and look for dinner) while I basically stayed in bed, feeling miserable.

Rome itself
The next day, I woke up feeling much better, so we got ready, had breakfast and started walking toward the Colosseum.
http://goo.gl/maps/lKJtZ
At this junction you normally turn left to head towards the Colosseum, however my friends took a right there, looking for dinner the day before. So I said "chaps, I think it's this way (while pointing to the Colosseum)" and one of my friends replied "Whoa, I totally missed that yesterday, how did that happen?"


I see what you did there still, I'd be more inclined to pay it if it was €6.66 given the name.
And yes I did get better the next day, fortunately enough.

WC_EEND

Rome (continued)

My initial thought when we arrived at the Colosseum was "wow, this is a lot bigger than I imagined it". then we started looking for the entrance, which we found and then skipped the cue for tickets as I had been smart and purchased them at home. The Colusseum itself was a pretty impressive sight as well, though for some reason there were loads of visitors there who insisted on looking like complete idiots by taking pictures of everything with their iPad. After the Collosuem we popped down to the Forum Romanum to check that out. Since it was around noon at this point I suggested we avoided the Palatine hill for obvious reasons, so we went the other way and got slightly lost, however thanks to Google Maps and cheap data roaming rates (€0.5/MB I love Mobile Vikings, which is my carrier) we soon found our way again.

Looking for Gelato

Thanks to my research I did while still at home, I know gelateria Fatamorgana was 50m from where we were staying, so I went to check it out only to find it was closed (this was not mentioned anywhere on their site). Somewhat dissapointed, I go back to the internets and find a website saying that Claudio Torcé's Il Gelato near the Circo Massimo is open on mondays and thus take the subway to check it out. After finding the place with a bit of help from Google maps, we found out it was closed as well which made me damn the aformentioned website to the deepest pist of hell. Moral of the story: don't bother with gelato on mondays.
Later on the day, I passed by where Fatamorgana is located and I see the door is opened, so I walk in, the bloke standing behind the counter says to me

" 'Scuzi signore, is closed today"
"So I noticed" I reply "When are you open?" I then ask
"Every day except monday from-a 12pm to midnight" he replies
"Thank you very much" I then reply.

Tuesday

after going for breakfast, I popped down into lobby to check in for our SN flight back home, using the computer of the B&B which I could very kindly borrow for a few minutes. This turned out to be less of a breeze than expected since SN would email the boarding passes to me and hotmail needed email veification via phone (the fact that Hotmail was in Italian didn't help much either). I the end I got it to cooperate and the printer quickly spat out my boarding passes. I then went back to our room where we started to plan out our route we were going to take between the different Roman monuments (starting at the Vittorio Emmanuele II mausoleum). Since it was noon by now we decided it'd be best to wait a bit since it was now very hot outside. However I walked around Monti a bit and popped down to Fatamorgana for some refreshing and excellent tasting gelato (I had the snow white and the fig sorbet in case anyone is wondering).
At about 3pm we set off for our walking tour with an intermediate stop at Frigidarium for more gelato (which was good, but not as good as Fatamorgana's). At around 5pm we made it to the Vatican, where we sat down for a bit and took a lav break on the papal loo.
Afterwards, we headed towards Pizzarium (which I'd again read about on the internet) for dinner, and as recommended, had the Pizza Rosso (basically the pizza base with tomato sauce, olive oil in generous quantities, thyme and oregano on it) which was simply excellent and by far the best pizza I had ever had so far.

After that excellent lunch, we made our way back to the Centro 'storico (briefly returning to Pizzarum because somebody forgot his sunglasses there on the counter, which would be me) in search of the Trevi fountain, which turned out to be harder than expected as the Italians had clearly drawn inspiration from Belgian roadworks for the amount of signs placed (ie: one). after getting a bit lost because we were walking on streets not shown on our paper map, and because my phone was running on fumes, one of my friends took out his iPhone and used that for route guidance.
within minutes we were at the Trevi fountains (it was dark by now which made it even better to look at).
At this point we were all exhausted and the original plan was to walk back to our B&B in Monti, however that plan went into the bin and we just got the lazy option and ended up taking the subway.

WC_EEND

Going back to Belgium

All 3 of us woke up around 7am for our 10am flight back home. We got dressed (having showered the day before), packed the last remaining things, made a final check of the room and then left for breakfast and, most importantly, coffee. After that we crossed the street and took a subway train full of graffiti to Termini station where we bought our tickets for the Leonardo Express to FCO.
Unlike the ticketing machines used by the NMBS in Belgium, the ones used by Trenitalia do accept foreign credit/debit cards, which was useful. The train arrived bang on time in Termini and after being cleaned (why can't the NMBS do this?) we got on board and the train left on time.
Nothing really special happened during the train journey and half an hour later we were at FCO.

FCO

After a "quick" lav break for 2 of my friends, we started looking for the Terminal 3 departures area (and more specifically how to get to the gates). After some wandering around the airport, we finally found it, and cued in the EU line at security. Once through security we started wondering where we needed to go as there was no further signage as to what part of Terminal 3 our flight was leaving from. To our left was a passport control booth, so I figured that would be for non-Schengen flights which meant we needed to go right. Which we did. Rather unexpectedly, some signage then appeared and also a monitor displaying what gate our plane was at, so we made our way towards our plane and sat down at the gate waiting until boarding was called (I spent my time reading eightblack's Christmas trip to Italy).

SN 3176
Airbus A319
OO-SSR
Load factor: about 90%
14F

The plane looked quite new, a quick Google search then revealed it was delivered to Mexicana in 2010, before being transferred to SN in 2011. I was quite quite comfortable in the plane, the leg room was excellent (a lot better than LH cityline) and I snagged a window seat during online check in. The only downside were the rock hard Recaro slimline seats which the whole LH Group uses.
Then departure time came and the Italian airport operatives were still in the flight deck (with the door open). Then the captain came on the tannoy to say we had a slight delay because one of the front toilets was leaking and they needed to complete some paperwork. This went on for about half an hour in which time the Italians went for coffee twice (not kidding here). Then some mechanics came to look at the toilet in question, and we were given the all clear.
In the end we left Rome with a delay of about 40mins. On takeoff the captain gave the little A319 the beans and we lept of the runway, back towards Belgium.


Legroom on the SN A319

After reaching 10000ft, the ding went off and the flight attendants started service. However, since we were flying B.light it was BoB for us, which I gladly took advantage of, since prices were reasonable.
Now, I don't know about you guys, but I like SN more than I do LH. Whereas the hard product is pretty much the same, I found the soft product on SN to be better. I found the service to be much less robotic compared to LH and I felt welcome whereas on LH, I just felt like someone who they have to serve. Now, I may be slightly biased since SN is my home carrier, but I was left with the same impression when I flew LX last year. So really in my view, LH is the weak one out of the 3 service-wise (I haven't flown OS yet).
When we started our descent into BRU, it was clouds all around (ie: typical Belgian weather) and quite a bit of rain as well. The landing itself was quite smooth (rather unexpectedly on 25R instead of the usual 25L).

BRU
After disembarking, we made our way to the airport station, bought our ripoff Diabolo surcharge tickets at a very slow working ticket office man, which cause us to miss our direct train to Gent by less than a minute (the train was just pulling out of the station when we came down the stairs). After some swearing I fired up my phone to start looking for alternatives. It was soon decided that we would go via the dump that is Brussel-Zuid to Gent. After about 20 minutes of waiting, our train to Brussels pulled into the station, which turned out to be one of the rustbuckets shown in the first post. So we boarded it. Rather unexpectedly, the train left on time and didn't break down as is common on these old pieces of crap. While somewhere between the airport and Schaarbeek, a young ticket inspector came to check our tickets. I gave him our Go Pass (a special 10-journey card for young people) and he said:
"there's 3 of you"
"Indeed there are" I replied "that's why I entered our route 3 times"
"oh right" he then said
I then presented him with our Diabolo surcharge tickets which he didn't even bother looking at.
Once arrived at Brussel-Zuid, we went in search of the platform for the train to Gent, which turned out to have a 7-minute delay (surprise, surprise). About 1 minute before it was due into the station, a platform change was announced, so everybody suddenly hoofed it towards the new platform and then, joy of joys, another pair of rustbuckets to take us home.
Needless to say, this train was much too small for the amount of people that wanted to board it, so it was standing up in the hallways for us. When the ticket inspector came, he didn't even bother asking for tickets, likely out of shame.


this was inside the train.

After an uneventful 30min train ride we arrived back in a construction site (aka Gent-Sint-Pieters).

Okay, so closing comments or TL;DR version: SN is better than LH in my opinion, Rome is a fantastic city, don't be sick when you go on holiday and you can always count on the NMBS to make a mess of things.

Hope you enjoyed reading my Trip report.

Kevincm

Sounds like Brussels Airlines did a reasonable job on a short leg. All you can ever ask haul on a shorthaul trip.

Glad you recovered after feeling ill and enjoyed the break in Rome - one city I've yet to wander down to.

And no matter the country, you can always rely on the rail network to louse things up

Enjoyable trip report there WC_EEND

Forrest Bump

Nice TR WC_EEND, and enjoyable writing style.

I'm glad eventually you managed to feel better and visit Rome.

sk3

Great trip report WC_EEND. (And thanks for the shout out!)