The twelve-hour flight from Narita to Rome was uneventful even though the pilot started the flight by warning us there could be some turbulence and then flashed the seatbelt sign on several times for bumps that none of us could feel. My worst nightmare, a flight with four busting children where the seatbelt sign remains on the whole time.

We followed the edge of the sun set all the way in, flying over China, Kazakhstan, and Russia. From the window you could see snow capped mountains that Pete reckons must have been at least 10,00 feet high.

The kids by this stage were over the novelty of flying; the worst part being that the same movies were playing from the flight before. Noah tells me he has seen ‘Hairspray’ ten times now. The amazing part is, he still loves it, personally, if I see John Travolta wiggle his bum in a skirt again I think I might vomit. There was only one time when the exhaustion of travelling for two days started to show. Poppy and Kai both had a bit of melt down, tears and wanting to get off 30,000 feet up. Not long after the tears though they fell asleep, Jack and Noah too. All of them got a good few hours, Poppy stayed asleep until we landed.

Standing in the aisle to get off the plane in Rome Kai looked around at me with panic on his face, saying something I couldn’t hear. I bent down so I was closer to him, my backpack sliding up my back and hitting me in the head, my computer bag slipping off my shoulder and landing with a thud on the floor.

‘What did you say?’

‘I forgot my shoes.’

I looked down at his feet, no shoes, just two grey socks. There were people lined up behind us as far as I could see, our seat was now about seven rows back.

‘OK, hop in here, yep, in here.’ I bundled Kai and Poppy into the closest seats so the long line of people could get past. We waited, watching Pete, Jack and Noah way ahead of us, get off the plane. Finally when everyone had gone past I made my way back to where Kai had been sitting, sure enough, two abandoned shoes pushed up underneath the chair in front.

Once the laces were on I looked up at him and said, ‘Don’t take them off again until you go to bed, right?’

‘OK.’

Customs was easy, no finger prints or photos just the checking of our passports and then we were through. That’s not to say we didn’t have to queue. It was my first introduction to European queuing, no nice lines that everyone stayed in but a crowd in the shape of a funnel pointing at the guys behind the glass doors that were checking us in. Twice we were within about five people of the check in point when the guy sitting there stood up, stretched and walked out closing his glass door behind him, heading off for smoko, no one lined up to replace him. By this time it was already six-thirty Italian time, about four in the morning back home. Luckily the kids had had enough sleep on the plane. Jack and Noah were quite happy to stare at anyone who stared at them and Kai and Poppy were making funny faces at a Japanese teenage kid they’d been playing with at distance since Narita.

There was another monorail, OK, so obviously I’m naïve in the way of international airports. The kids were happy to be getting another ride, and then we were out, Roma airport. Now the fun began. It wasn’t like Narita where we knew there was a bus waiting to take us to our warm comfortable hotel, this was a completely different ball game.

Before we decided on how we were going to make our way from the airport to our flat Pete went and changed all the yen he’d got into Euros. The kids and me collapsed with all the luggage into some seats. I was amazed that we could still want to sit after twelve hours of being strapped in.

‘Right,’ Pete said when he came back with his wallet full Euro, ‘ready to go?’

The kids jumped up, backpacks on their backs, Jack and Noah had a wheelie bag each. Pete had his laptop, man bag and a wheelie bag. I had a laptop, over full handbag, heavy jacket and the other big wheelie bag.

‘Station’s this way,’ Pete said as if he was a tour guide who’d been to Rome a thousand times before, ‘keep up.’

We took three steps and then there was an Italian guy in front of us speaking English with a heavy accent, ‘You want taxi?’

‘Do we want a taxi?’ I called out to Pete who was already at the top of the escalators.

‘How much?’ Pete asked while all I was thinking was ‘yes please.’

‘Where you go?’

‘Lazzio,’ I said.

‘Where?’

‘Lazzio.’

‘No Lazzio.’

OK, great, either my accent was so bad that he couldn’t understand a word I was saying or the place we intended to spend five days in didn’t exist.

Pete pulled a receipt out of his pocket and showed it to the guy.

‘Ah si, si.’

‘How much?’

‘For all of you and bags ninety Euro, special deal because of bambino.’

‘Sounds good’ I said to Pete. The thought of dragging our eight months worth of luggage and four kids through a city we didn’t know in the dark didn’t appeal.

‘No,’ Pete said, ‘cheaper on the train.’

‘Train cost you sixty-five Euro and then you have to catch bus. I do it for seventy five.’

‘No, no thanks, we’ll catch the train.’ And Pete was gone heading off down the escalators that had a sign above them pointing to the station.

The guy followed us to the top of the escalators, ‘Seventy, seventy Euro and you get your bambino home to bed.’

Pete laughed and turned to Jack who was on the escalator step behind him, ‘Mafia,’ he said.

Jack’s tired eyes sprang open.

The train tickets cost us thirty three Euro, ‘See,’ Pete said to me, very pleased with himself, ‘mafia.’

The train ride was relatively easy except for Jack and Noah who were trying to lug bags that were as heavy as them. They had to pull them up a big step into the train and then try to navigate the narrow train aisle while the Italians stuck behind us were calling out ‘Scusi, scusi.’

We squeezed ourselves into two of the compartments at the start of the carriage, avoiding the one with the passed out drunk with the beer bottle still balancing in his hand. Jack and me got in a compartment with a young guy who had dread locks and a backpack. Pete and the other three kids with their bags got a compartment to themselves.

There was only one stop so we didn’t have to think too hard about where we got off. According to the guy with dread locks the train didn’t go any further.

We lugged our bags up three flights of steep escalators and then surfaced in the middle of Rome, one of the worlds most renowned pick pocketing capitals, on a busy Thursday night.

Now, I thought, a taxi.

Pete already seemed to have adopted the rule Rome lives by, don’t hesitate or you’re dead. He pushed through the crowd without looking back, expecting us to follow. He led us out the glass sliding doors and onto the street. The kids scurried along behind, Jack and Noah still pulling bags, I was last in line.

‘Taxi, Madame, you want taxi?’

Oh, god, yes please.

‘Pete!’ Pete kept walking. ‘Pete!’

He stopped and turned, ‘We’ll get a taxi?’

He walked back slowly towards me and the guy trying to sell me a cab, the kids all turned and followed.

‘How much?’ Pete asked.

‘Where to?’

The receipt for our accommodation came out of Pete’s pocket again.

‘Forty euro, straight to the door, forty euro.’

‘No, thanks.’ Pete turned and walked towards the end of the station where there were buses pulling in and out and buses lined up waiting.

‘Thanks,’ I said to the guy who smiled and shrugged his shoulders.

‘105,’ Pete said, ‘we need to get the 105,’ and then he lurched out into the traffic that didn’t look like it would stop for anyone and told the kids to follow. ‘This one,’ he said pointing, ‘this is the one we need to get.’

I looked at the bus he was pointing at, there were so many people on it that they were balancing on the steps, the doors struggling to close. Yeah right, four kids, four bags, we’ll fit.

‘Stay here,’ Pete said leaving us on the narrow bus stop platform while he walked out into the middle of the road, up to one of the bus drivers.

I couldn’t hear Pete but I could see that he was talking, the bus driver kept walking, his back to Pete and said something very short and I thought probably mumbled.

‘I’m going to get the tickets,’ Pete said.

OK. Yep, peak hour Rome, we looked like some version of the travelling Von Traps just without the curtain clothes and no one was singing. My eyes were hanging out of my head and the kids by this stage must have been hanging on by a thread, but OK. I watched Pete as he went across the main road in front of the train station to a newsagency.

‘Got them,’ he said as he came back waving the tickets triumphantly, ‘four Euro. Four Euro. Mafia.’

A bus pulled in with our number, ‘OK on we get. Jack you first and I’ll pass up the bags, put them over in the corner their.’

Luckily a bus with the same number had just left so we were one of the few getting on. I grabbed Poppy and Kai by the hand and followed our bags up the steps.

A young Italian woman got up from the seat next to where Jack had put our bags. I thought she was standing up for me. I shook my head and said, ‘No, no, you stay.’ But she pointed at Poppy and then the seat she’d vacated and said, ‘Si, si.’

‘There you go Poppy,’ I said, ‘you can sit down.’

‘I don’t want to.’

‘You must be tired.’

‘I don’t want to.’

By this time the Italian woman had found herself another seat and was looking back at us.

‘Sit down now.’

There were tears, but she sat.

‘Four stops,’ Pete said, ‘we get off at Cassalina, keep a look out for Cassalina.’

Right and how are we supposed to find Cassalina? I stared out the window, willing my eyes to find this magic bus stop.

People got on and off as the bus went along, squeezing past our bags.

‘Cassalina!’ I called out to Pete as the bus sucked its doors closed and pulled out from the curb. ‘We’ve missed it, gone past.’

‘Press the button Jack. We’ll get off at the next stop.’

‘But then we’ll have to walk,’ I said, panic finally starting to creep in.

‘Not too far.’

‘With four bags?’

‘We’ll be fine.’

When the bus pulled into the next stop we squeezed past people, Jack handing the luggage down to Pete, me making sure everyone and everything was off.

‘It’s only two minutes back that way,’ Pete said.

There was graffiti everywhere, guys climbing over barricade fences and one old guy sitting on an up turned milk crate underneath a bridge in what could only be described as a cage.

‘What’s he doing in there mum?’ Kai asked after we’d walked past.

‘It’s his house,’ Pete said.

I could hardly hear the ‘oh’ that came out of Kai’s mouth.

‘There it is,’ Pete said.

And miraculously it was, this place we’d dragged our luggage all the way across the world to existed. A modern block of units that matched the name on the receipt that Pete had been flashing at the cabbies.

We pressed the buzzer and Costanza answered just like she’d said she would in her emails. Her voice came over the intercom, telling us to come up. She opened the door for us and said, ‘welcome, welcome.’ The tiny flat looked like it had on the Internet, my first thought was that we hadn’t been ripped off.

‘A very long trip for the children,’ she said. ‘I got them some biscuits and lollies, if that’s OK.’

I wanted to hug her, squeeze her real tight. Then I was going to ask her how good the locks on the doors were.

That night when I was saying goodnight to Jack in bed he said, ‘I don’t like it here.’

‘Why not?’ I asked sitting down beside him.

‘Because of the Mafia and all the security guards, because of terrorists.’

‘There are no terrorist. It’s going to be fine, you wait and see, we’re going to have a lovely time.’ Just as I kissed him goodnight on the forehead police sirens roared past on the road below, not one or two cars, but four or five. ‘It’ll be fine Jack, just fine,’ I said again, to make sure he’d heard me, to make sure I believed it too.

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