Italy by Rail and Ship: Spoiled Americans! (That’s Me)

So I have been wanting to blog and post photos of our trip on a daily basis, but when we arrived to Italy and into Lake Como I realized that this would be a near impossible task.  Simply put, WiFi here is not the blazing super fast speed that I am used to at home.  Even our data plan via TMobile is often at LTE speeds, but abroad the maximum speed allowed is at 2G.  Basically, it will take hours to post a couple of photos and oftentimes it will “time out” or will need a “connection reset.”  It has been a frustrating lesson in patience and in realizing that I am a spoiled American, used to things like fast internet, ordering free water and everyone speaking English.

I have come to the conclusion that my daily blog posts will just have to be text-based, and if I am lucky perhaps there will be one photo that will somehow upload to this site.  And since I don’t really care a whole lot about appropriate / correct grammer, I will probably just use my phone speech-to-text feature and see what happens!   But I should at least list out my approximate expenses for each day, as this is after all a blog about traveling and saving money.  So here are our expenses for this Saturday, July 22nd:

4 euro:  bus ride to train station

9.2 euro:  train to Rome

3 euro:  bus from train station to hotel

100 euro:  one night lodging at hotel

10 euro:  tip for our walking tour guide

3 euro:  Gelato

4.4 euro:  Pizza

Total:  124.6 x 1.2 = $149.52

What, only 7.4 euros for food all day?  Yeah, well, we got off of our cruise ship this morning and had a huge breakfast.  I decided that I was going to fast all day today and not eat until breakfast tomorrow, and Lisa wasn’t too hungry and just needed a late afternoon slice of pizza and a evening scoop of Gelato.  So yeah, 7.4 euros or about $9 for food for today, but with that asterisk.  We’ll definitely spend more tomorrow, especially since our hotel is located in the Trastevere neighborhood of Rome, known for a lot of great restaurants with all’aperto dining and at prices that won’t rip you off.  So we will probably do that sometime tomorrow, in addition to getting some Gelato or trying out another slice of pizza!

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