Yes! Free WiFi in Rome

Sunday, July 15, 2007

My quest to find free WiFi Internet connections on our trip has ended in success. Just 3 blocks away from my hotel is a free hotspot- Largo di Torre Argentina. I was so happy to find the signal I sat down on the sidewalk and started to connect to the hotspot and not noticing I was sitting between 2 homeless people sleeping. There is something universal about the homeless and parks. The free WiFi requires a registration process that is entirely in Italian. I muddled through the entries and guessed on most of the required fields. There is one web page that I have no idea what it wanted. I found some tourists from the UK passing by and asked for help. They knew some Italian and we finally guessed the process is requiring a cell phone number and I will have to call a special number to register. After calling the special number, which apparently is toll free, I received a password and the username is my cell phone number. There apparently is also an one hour limit probably for the day.

I was totally exhausted after my little trip to find the Internet hotspot. I must have asked 20 people and most of them have no idea it's available in Rome. Finally, it was the young lady at the corner drug store that told me about the site. Later I went back to the hotel and picked up the family and headed out for dinner. Most restaurants do not even open for dinner until 7 PM.

At dinner, there was an American girl at the next table ordering a salad and asking the waitress, "Do you have any Italian dressing?" I was getting a little home sick tonight when I got the bill for dinner. They charged us 7.80 Euros for a 2 liter bottle of water "with no gas." At the rate of 1.4 to 1.5 US dollars to 1 Euro, it is kind of crazy. We finished our meals and waited another 15 to 20 minutes for them to give us our bill.

Our hotel is right next to the Pantheon. In fact our window opens into the plaza. I will have to take a photo of the window tomorrow.

It's spaghetti with tomato sauce #14 tonight. My daughter made the number "14" with her left over tomato sauce on her plate and took a picture of it at dinner. She also had some sauce on her shirt but it came out with some Tide-To-Go. Yes, my wife is always prepared. I think my son is on his 10th or 11th pizza tonight.