We had to have ONE bad day, right?

…but why’d it have to be our anniversary??? We knew going into the trip that we were going to have to travel on the 27th – our actual anniversary day – but had come to terms with it, since it was just a 4 hour train ride, and we didn’t really have any other option (we had to arrive in Rome in time to see it before leaving, and we had already made hotel reservations) – plus, we kept saying that the whole trip was celebrating our anniversary, so the day itself didn’t have to be “the perfect day”— and we kept trying to keep a good attitude, but it got not-so-comical the more things that went wrong all day! We had planned to have a leisurely “American” breakfast (with eggs and stuff – Rick Steve’s says they take breakfast about as seriously as flossing… which is NOT) before leaving on the train. So we went to the one restaurant in town that served “american” breakfast, and ordered a smoothie, some eggs, and hot chocolate… but they were out of hot chocolate, a smoothie was “not possible at this time” and the kitchen didn’t open for making the eggs for another hour! So, we got our little croissants and juice and headed out. We hadn’t realized initially that the “4 hour train ride” we had tickets for didn’t actually leave from Cinque Terre, and while it was only a half hour train ride to La Spezia where it did leave from, we had to take the train that left 2 hours beforehand, so now our travel time became 6 hours in total… we made the best of it, chilling in McDonald’s at the station for lunch, then enjoying first class on the 4-hour train to Rome… when we got there, we had to switch to a Metro and then we were supposed to take a shuttle bus to our hotel (How far is it!??)… we got to the corner where we were supposed to take our shuttle bus and couldn’t find it anywhere on that bustling street, so we called the hotel (worked from the 3rd payphone we tried), and they told us that the 5:00 one had just come, and the next one was at 6:15… and so, we stood – in the RAIN – and waited for over an hour until our shuttle bus came, and we finally made it to the hotel at 7pm, after having left Cinque Terre at 10am. so our “4 hour train ride” turned into 9 hours of travel time. And we still wanted to go out to dinner on our anniversary, so we got a little cleaned up and headed back out on the next shuttle at 8:00 to go out on the town and see Rome… but we got lost trying to find our restaurant (which, once we got there, was actually closed from July 15th-Aug 31st, so we had to pick somewhere else to eat, which had horrible service but okay food), and by the time we finished eating, we were stressing out because the last shuttle back to the hotel was at 11, and it was already 10:30. We tried to book it back, but finally at 11:00 gave up and hailed a taxi, which cost us 20 euro ($30) to get back to the hotel. we were both so exhausted (very close to tears) we just crashed in bed, hoping we’d be refreshed and the next day would be better…