We left the autocamping site early the next morning. For some reason I had been promoted to trip navagator and my map skills plus my natural intuition kept us lost just on the outskirts of Rome for nearly two hours. Rome is surrounded by a highway that circles the city in a ring. We missed our exit, but managed to get back to our road after a little backtracking (thankgoodness we didn't have to go all the way around the entire circle). We then drove up and down a twelve mile stretch of highway exploring every side road that branched off it in search of our hostel. I found our directions conflicting and I still believe that it was just our methodical method of checking every road that found us our camping site.
Of course we didn't have a reservation.
They wouldn't let us have a tent without a reservation so they directed us up the hill to their internet access point/computer lab to make a reservation online. After we booked two tents we walked back down to the office and checked in. Then we drove up into the Roma plus camping site. Parked at one of their restruants and walked to our tents. The picture at the top of this post is the girls' tent. It was closer than the boys' tent. As you can see the tents aren't really all that tent-ish. They're more like little house rooms that were completely impervious to bugs (well most bugs anyway. One evening a particularly determined hornet managed to force its way into the girls' tent, much to their consternation. They woke me up to show me what was left of its dead body after it had been beaten to death with pellows).
The boys' tent looked exactly the same only it was closer to the highway (I believe the highway connected the Roman police force with every emergency in the city as every couple minutes we would hear another siren racing by). I was on the top bunk with Tallis below me. Schyler was on the single bunk across from us.
A day of hot stuffy highway navigating put us in the mood for a relaxing swim in the Roma plus Pools. That's our tent in the background. We did absolutely nothing, but swim and be lazy around the pools all day. We swam in both the big pools and then tried the jakoozy (ok... has anyone tried to spell that word before? I am never going to use it again). Much to our surprise, instead of being hot and bubbly, it was freezing cold and bubbly. After the initial shock it was the most relaxing thing I had ever been in. Just the thing after the blazing car ride in the morning. After we had been thourougly doused we sat in the sun around the pool and people watched. Roma plus camping was popular with people from all over the world. Super hip Germans, the whitest English dude I have ever seen (he was ponchy too... honestly he looked like he was made of sour cream) and a fat man sunburned beyond cultural identification. There was an especially entertaining scrawny little kid who peed in the pool before he got in. I think Schyler and I were the only one's who saw him and so of course we passed a very enjoyable afternoon watching anybody else get in (we did warn Tallis and the girls). The best was when the super cool would deign to go for a swim. They would not be so cool if only they knew what they were swimming in. It was a good day.
Look how gorgeous this place is!
That is the restruant on whose porch we would gather each morning, drink coffee, internet and prepair for our day. Each evening after swimming or showering we would gather again and play poker, internet and relax.
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