How we did it: Getting to hotels in Rome
Hotel Arcangelo, Rome, Italy Before we left New York I researched all the options to get from Rome’s airport to our hotel. The airport s...
 |
| Hotel Arcangelo, Rome, Italy |
Several bus companies provide direct service from the airport to Roma Termini station. The cheapest bus is Terravision at €4 and goes non-stop to Termini. This is the most affordable way to get there and is especially convenient if your hotel is nearby. You can also access much of the city using the Metropolitan and both routes intersect here.
We decided to take the SIT bus, which at €6 was the most expensive of the three bus companies. I did a lot of researching and found you could save €1 by booking through Alitalia’s website even if you’re traveling on another airline like us. This brings it in line with the other company, but SIT makes an extra stop that may be beneficial depending on where you are staying.
Our hotel was near the Vatican and we discovered SIT had a stop just a few blocks away. After a day of traveling that was €1 well spent for convenience. Note: even though SIT advertises this as a “Vatican” stop it’s actually a good walk away from Vatican City. Still, we found it convenient for our hotel. Do yourself a favor and map it out to see if it makes sense for you.
In Oslo we were a bit concerned the gate agents might notice our bags were a bit too large and try to charge us a fee. They then offered to check bags for free since it was a full flight and we decided to take them up on the offer to avoid any hassle.
Side note: bags purchased in the US are measured in inches while European airlines use the metric system. This often results in slight differences in “carry-on size” bags. Bring a tape measure to the store before buying the bag and remember to include handles and wheels because sometimes the tag at the store does not.
Our flight arrived a few minutes early from Oslo, but Norwegian doesn’t use a jet-bridge there so we had to wait for buses to bring us to the terminal.
Even with the bus delay we still had a lengthy wait for our bags to arrive. A monitor shows an ETA for your baggage, but whenever we would get to that time they just moved the ETA 10 minutes later. I started getting nervous we might miss our bus when it was 15 minutes before our bus left.
Thankfully the bags started coming. It was short-lived though because one bag got stuck in the chute backing everything up. Fortunately, our bags came out the other end and we raced to catch our bus.
We made it with a few minutes to spare. A ticket agent reviewed our boarding pass and we were allowed to board. The bus left soon after. On board it was very warm, but we were grateful to be in Rome and looking forward to a free tour the next morning and a day of exploring.
