Trying to Spot Our Train

It's always a little sad when it's time to leave one of our tour destinations. It seems that just as we're getting comfortable, it's time to go.  We'd enjoyed our stay in Rome but we were also excited to see Florence and taking the high speed train would be fun as well.  Of course we had to get to the train first.  With all our gear, we decided to take to take the city bus to the main train station.  After a short ride, we arrived at the main station well before our train.  We went inside, and like we usually do, looked on the departure screen for our train to figure out which platform it would depart from.  We were quite perplexed to not see our train, or any train to Florence, listed.  We got in the line. For the info counter.  The line was moving slowly and we were getting nervous.  I saw a guy in an official looking vest walk buy so I asked him where to catch our train.  His English was not so good but I think he said to stay in line.  After another couple minutes in line, something didn't seem right. I saw a lady in the official looking vest answering questions for someone and decided to check with her.  Uh oh!!  We were at the wrong station!  She told we could take regional train to the correct station and could still make it on time.  So, we rushed down to regional train platform.  Luckily, regional trains around Rome, like much of Europe, run frequently and one arrived in five minutes.  It was a nerve-wracking ride, not knowing how long exactly it would take but knowing our train to Florence would not wait.  We got to the station with about ten minutes to spare.  However, we still had to get to the right platform, which in a big station can be quite trek.  As it turns out, we there with five minutes to spare and we could finally breath a sigh of relief.  We were pleased that the rest of our journey to Florence went smoothly.

I'm not sure if we could've taken the next train to Florence if we had missed our scheduled one.  That's probably something to look into for future reference. 

Overall, it was great to see Rome and some of its amazing sites.  There is so much more to see there and in some of neighboring regions.  As the shuttle driver who took us from the airport to our apartment said, "I've lived here my whole life and I'm still discovering new places."  That said, it's not the most relaxing city.  The traffic is a bit annoying.  The narrow alley-ways seem like they should be auto restricted like many other European cities do.   We did have some good pizza and the bread wasn't half-bad either (though I preferred the bred in France).  I don't recall seeing a lot of diversity in the cuisine - I saw lots of pizza and pasta and Italian food.  And some good wine!