Originally posted on July 28, 2011 by Canicus

Today is the last “full day” in Rome.

I went to the post office to mail some of the tour books I brought with me. The idea was to lighten the load somewhat to account for the things I picked up while here which included four rather heavy books. The post office is within walking distance of my hotel. In some respects it is rather like ours, but in others not. They have a shop that not only sells mailers and mailing supplies, but a variety of things (like children’s books, spiral notebooks, etc.) that are totally unrelated to mail services. I had picked up some mailers earlier, put the books in them and addressed them to myself.

Some of the significant differences between the Italian post office and American. First it is divided into two sections. One section has to do with paying bills, money orders and that sort of thing. The other is the mail service—letters, packages and the like. In either section you take a number from a machine that has a letter and a number. The letter indicates what service you require; the number is a queue number. They provide some chairs while you wait for your number to come up, although there were more people waiting than chairs. When my “P07” came up the lady realized that it was going to cost me nearly 100 euros to mail the books in the mailers—three times what it would cost in a box costing a couple of euros. So I bought the box. The lady then proceeded to pack the box for me, seal it up with tape and address it for me! I really can’t imagine that happening in the U.S. Obviously, Italy is one of those evil, socialist countries plagued with inefficient bureaucrats.

The next task was to pack my suitcase and backpack with everything for the return trip, as I realized I was going to have to leave the hotel  not later than 5:15 AM Leonardo Express out of Termini to Fiumicino Airport.

I puttered around, had lunch and supper. Then in the evening I finally got in line to buy the train ticket to the Airport. As I mentioned, the lines at Termini ticket counters are huge. It took an hour standing in line to get the ticket. And the line was short compared to what I saw most of the time. Then, with ticket in hand, I set the laptop on top of the packed bag to write the final travelogue from Rome, slip the laptop in to the backpack and get to bed early.

Obviously I have given up trying to get these posted. The internet in the hotel is too much of a hassle. I’ll post the last few when get home. I’ll also attempt to update the photo logs.