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Getting to the plane, and the strike you should expect
Rome has two airports and they are not interchangeable. Fiumicino, officially Leonardo da Vinci, handles almost everything long-haul and is connected to Termini station by the Leonardo Express, a direct train roughly every fifteen minutes. Ciampino is smaller, further out, mostly low-cost, and reached by bus. Confusing the two is a classic and expensive mistake, because they are about an hour apart. Getting around the country, though, the airport is often the wrong choice entirely: the Frecciarossa does Rome to Milan in under three hours center to center, there are two competing operators on the same tracks — Trenitalia and the private Italo — and for most domestic journeys the train beats flying once you count the transfers. Then there is lo sciopero. Transport strikes are frequent, and rather than being the chaos they sound like, they are heavily regulated: they must be announced in advance, they are published on the transport ministry's website, and the law requires fasce di garanzia, guaranteed windows — typically early morning and late afternoon — when service must run normally. An Italian traveler checks for strikes the way others check the weather, and the answer is usually that a specific four-hour window is affected. One last habit worth copying: seeing people off in person is still normal here. Italians accompany family and friends right to the security line, at airports and at stations, and buon viaggio is said aloud rather than texted.