On our last day we took the train back to Rome and then to Fiumicino, near the airport. Fiumicino is the only city in Italy I'd ever been to, back in 2008 when Ben and I got stranded overnight on the way home from Tunisia. An American Airlines employee named Giuseppe took pity on us and not only made us a hotel reservation, he called his friend, the owner of the hotel, to come pick us up at the airport. And then he came back to check on us later in the evening! This is the only time I've ever sent an unsolicited glowing customer service email to a major company.
His friend's place was the Seccy Hotel, which in 2008 was brand new. We were, I'm pretty sure, the only guests in the entire building. I don't think anyone had ever stayed in our room before. We were tired and had no luggage, so we ended up wandering around Fiumicino a little bit and then hanging out in the hotel watching Italian-dubbed episodes of 90210 - the one where Brenda finds a lump in her breast, I'm now remembering, which I'm sure is as ironic in retrospect for breast cancer survivor Shannon Doherty as for me.
Anyway, I was curious to see if the Seccy Hotel still exists and it does! So I made a reservation there. It now has personalized linens and everything like a real hotel.
Just the same! The front desk lady confirmed the hotel had opened right around the time we were there before. It's just a mid-range airport hotel but fun to revisit after all these years.
We went out to find food somewhere. Fiumicino is busier than I remembered it being - we had a hard time finding food in 2008. But I think it was also Sunday. We pretty easily found this nice restaurant and ordered the cheese plate and charcuterie and a bottle of white wine and it was basically heaven.
Then we walked over to see the ocean and dip our toes in the Mediterranean.
The Tiber enters the sea here, and I was surprised not to see any fishing boats, which I remembered very clearly - but when we came back in the evening, the whole canal was lined with them unloading the day's catch.
In the evening we went out for another walk. As an aside, the mosquitoes in Italy were intense and I was constantly itchy from Venice through to the end. They were particularly bad here by the sea.
Because we'd eaten all that meat & cheese, we decided to get one last gelato instead of dinner. But then the gelato place we found was only okay. Fortunately we came across a second one a little later, so we got a second round.
Arrivederci, Italy! I can't wait to go back.
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