Lido di Ostia

We spent our last night in Italy in Lido di Ostia, a resort town at the end of the line about 30 miles west of Rome, a metro ride from the Termini station and transfer to a train, maybe an hour’s trip total. The primary reason was that our hotel, the Belvedere Century, was near the airport (15 minute shuttle), so we wouldn’t have to wake early our last morning and hassle with luggage from the hotel to train station to airport. But Lido di Ostia is also a popular beach resort, apparently crowded during the summer months, and we thought there might be interesting restaurants and things to do there. But those assumptions did not turn out to be realized. For one thing it is a summer resort and we were there in April. It was essentially deserted. The beach was empty, the umbrellas and changing rooms shoved up in storage against the main road. A number of the hotels and restaurants looked to be closed for the season. Only a few locals, teenagers looking for something to do and older people looking for someone to talk with, ventured out on the outdoor mall across from our hotel. When we checked in, the desk clerk seemed bothered by our interruption of his surfing the net. As far as we could tell there were maybe five other rooms occupied for the night. We walked out on a pier from the beach, a few others huddled in coats in the wind and overcast, slate-gray sky. The whole feel was Coney Island in February. We wandered about and finally found a restaurant that turned out to be not that bad (though we were the only customers, perhaps of the whole night; the young waiter was more interested in the soccer game on the TV than on how we were doing). And ironically the hour we were to save by being close to the airport turned out not to exist. The shuttle left at 8:00 and 10:00, and we wanted to leave at 9:00 for an 11:30 plane. So we ended up having to take the 8:00, about the same time we would have had to leave a hotel in Rome had we stayed there, with the choice of restaurants, ruins, and streets to roam the night before. Instead of the hour from the Rome Termini to the airport, we spent the hour biding our time in the airport. One lives, one learns. . . . Well, one lives.