Day 26 - to Rome

First concern today was the ankle. Bruised and swollen but better, thank heavens. The bandage seemed to provide a little support and the pain killers did their work.
Today involved some simple steps, or so I thought. Check out of apartment, catch train, catch transport to apartment in Rome, check in to Rome apartment.
We had arranged for the apartment guy to meet us at 10:45am in plenty of time for us to get to the station but when he didn't turn up we had to call the office to find that he wasn't working that day so we had a little bit of panic until his colleague arrived then a rush to the station - all unnecessary.
We caught the red trenitalia highspeed train to Rome's Tiburtina station. The trains are beautiful, clean and run at 250 k per hour and the trip took just over an hour - why can't Australia have something like this?
Tiburtina is brand new and designed to serve the high speed trains but utterly confusing and not just to tourists - we saw Italians running around shaking their heads too. We were supposed to be meeting a guy with a placard with my name on it but we had no idea where to look and each exit sign seemed to take us somewhere different. There were great empty halls that seemed to lead nowhere with no obvious exits to the street or car parks.
We consulted the ipad and found a new message - no guy with placard - ring Paolo. Paolo offered that he would send Michael in a black Audi but we had to stand near the news kiosk, but where was that? And it was raining by now. Eventually we found a news kiosk and hoped it was the one.
Michael eventually arrived, apologised for being late and then took us on the ride of our lives through the streets of Rome. I had not realised how expressive two fingers could be, how many things could be communicated to other drivers and how loosely traffic signals could be interpreted. What an experience!
He dropped us at the top of our street, Via dei Cartari, in the Centro Storico district of Rome. We found Riccardo waiting for us and were able to check into our apartment. It's a 'period' building with wooden beams and rather interesting artwork. It's also a bit dark because the buildings are so close together. So we are living like Romans in the oldest part of the city.