Roam (If you want to)

I can see now why so many people don’t bother with the south of Italy and just focus on the north. It is so much nicer and more accessible than the south and functions more like the rest of Europe with the usual Italian idiosyncrasies. The journey to Rome involved the usual Italian inefficiencies which I am slowly learning to deal with. It seems that the rule is whenever there is a journey between 2 points Italians chose the one that takes the longest or whenever any sort of task needs to be done Italians take the inefficient method. As soon as I landed in Rome I felt fantastic which confirms my theory I’ve been working on for a few years that I am intolerant to humidity. From now on I will avoid humid climates and not eat anything should I have to go to one.

Allan has joined me for this phase of the holiday and we have instituted the Golden Rule that we shall not compare Italy to Germany because it will fail in every respect but will rather look to find the positives in Italy. So far these include unbelievable coffee with a consistency between venues you don’t get in Australia. Allan doesn’t really like coffee but even he is surprised by how good the coffee is here and how easily it goes down. There are many other varieties of coffee I have been trying like café macchiato, latte macchiato and a new favorite maracchino (espresso hit with milk shot, a dash of chocolate and top with milk froth). And a tip for new players, a coffee costs about 1 Euro to have at the bar, a public toilet 50 cents but if you go to a bar and get a coffee you can then use the bathroom for free. In Italy the potato chips are also amazing and Italian radio is stuck in the 1980s playing only European and American classics which I love because there is no law enforcing them to play 50% crap Australian content like there is back home.

Rome is one of the most amazing cities I have been to and well worth its rating as one of Europe’s top 5 cities. After a day here I was thinking it was possibly better than Paris but there are a few things that will always hold it back. I thought 4 days here would be sufficient to see the sites but I was wrong. I didn’t even touch the surface. Allan and I kicked started our holiday together with a segway tour of the city. These machines are not like mini motorbikes as I suspected but are actually rather organic. There are no buttons, peddles or handles to control speed or breaking but rather you use your body weight to direct the segway. If you put weight on the machine it moves forward, the more weight, the faster you go but if you put the weight on in the other direction you go backwards. It takes a bit of getting used to. We thought perhaps by doing something so obviously cool we would meet other cool tourists but alas the only other people doing this tour was an Indian family from American that didn’t even like cricket.

The tour was a great way to see the main sights. The coloseum, the forum, circus maximus, Rome’s first shopping mall built exclusively for women, numerous piazzas and all kinds of different views of ruins that were great for getting orientated as well as taking photos. By the end of our time here we were suffering piazza fatigue. This is a syndrome whereby Rome has so many piazzas, Piazza Venezia, Piazza di Spagna, Piazza di Trevi, Piazzo del Populo and Piazzo Navona (our favorite), to name a few that after a while they all seem the same. The segways were great fun to ride and we were quite an attraction with other tourists waving and smiling at us. During the tour we had our first brush with fame. This guy wearing tartan pants and a green handkerchief was walking down the street mobbed by women all wanting his autograph and photos. He was obliging the adoring fans but the problem was that there were a whole bunch of guys hanging around going who the hell is this guy? I suggested it was a world famous fashion designer because in trivia circles guys generally don’t know anything about these people and eventually this girl told us it was Roberto Capucci and when we acted like we had no idea who he was they were all very surprised. I’m sure if I asked them if they knew who Lando Calrissian was they wouldn’t have any idea either!

In Rome I pre organized a series of tours for us to do to help us get acquainted with the city and enjoy some of the history of the place by taking advantage of the expertise of the guides. As Allan is a history buff I thought this would get our holiday together off on the right foot. However there were a series of incidents which thwarted these plans somewhat. On the day we turned up for the Colosseum tour we were told that the Colosseum was on strike and as such the tour was cancelled thus putting a dent in our plans. Only in Italy can buildings go on strike! During this time I was able to bond with the other Australians waiting to reschedule their tour over that binding of sports – AFL football. You’ll be pleased to know that there is an Adelaide Crows fan everywhere one goes in the world. I got picked as a Hawthorn fan when people started talking about how well Essendon were going and I just said, “Have you seen their draw?” The tour itself was well worth it because we were able to skip the most amazing long queues and the guide told us stories about how this stadium was the original and the best. 76 entrances, 7000 guards doing crowd control, a sun shield for the crowd and the entire stadium could be evacuated in 12 minutes. Not to mention there was no overpriced food – the emperor gave everyone free food so there was no need to bring your own (which was banned!). There were no issues getting in and out of the stadium as each ticket had a gate number and seat number. It puts Telstra Dome to shame.

One should never come to Rome unless you are prepared to queue and wait to get into things. Also don’t come to Rome if you hate people because they are everywhere. Every time you want to go somewhere you have to squeeze past crowds of people negotiating the same narrow paths as you. The crowds are everywhere and in your face. There are many younger people in Rome as well as numerous school groups but the usual groups of fat American retired tourists (FARTS as I call them now!) abound. You’re probably sensing that I don’t like these people. The reason being that they travel stupid. For example they stop at the bottom of stairs to have conversations about where to go next or wait for Merv when there are masses of people behind them trying to get past. They stand next to things at the breakfast buffet deciding what to have when they should’ve decided before leaving their seats. Anyways I found Rome very safe to get around despite all the rumors of pick pockets which for many years put me off Italy. I think these were just stories designed to keep tourists away and you just need the usual sensibilities.  

Sometimes the pre booking of skip the line tickets doesn’t always work out as was the case for the Vatican City. As you know the Vatican City is one of Rome’s premier attractions and the queues to get inside are reputed to be crazy. The city itself is quite small covering 50 hectares but you still wouldn’t want to walk around it. Unfortunately this is exactly what Allan and I did whilst making our way to our rendezvous point that would have enabled us to skip the queues. Everything was going to plan perfectly, we left the right metro station and started making our way through the streets towards the Vatican but we weren’t quite sure which direction to go and instead of taking a left we took a right. We kept walking, thinking it wasn’t far to go but the map we had for some reason didn’t have the Vatican drawn to scale and what was down as a tiny little line was actually several kilometers in the real world. After numerous conversations with people that didn’t speak English trying to figure out where to go using broken Italian we really didn’t advance too much further and I decided we should give up, head on the next bus and go anywhere. Allan however recognized that on previous trips when my plans went awry he would let me fall on my sword and watch the plan fail so he could bag it but on this occasion he was very helpful in getting us back on track and forcing me to the finish line – the rendezvous point just so we could prove to ourselves we could get there like on the Amazing Race.

The problem we found was that once at the Vatican there are 50 people wandering around getting you to join group tours that will take you inside. The pope in his kindness has had these prices regulated at 45 Euros meaning you can just rock up and join a tour basing your decision entirely on the attractiveness of the tour guides. Our issue was that everyone has the idea of getting a skip the line ticket so that the skip the line queue turns out to be bigger then the regular queue! The entire system for processing people through the Vatican is essentially completely stuffed and as such I wouldn’t recommend going unless you were a private guest of the pope or were able to procure the services of a private tour guide who takes 2/3 people through. The hallways of the Vatican are simply not built to handle the many thousands of people that want to go through. So you get in, clear security and then there is 1 escalator to transport you all to the top. There is only 1 way through the Vatican and you are often caught up in a wave of people pushing and shoving to get through (people were falling over – so Christian!) trying to keep up with their tour group. And given that we weren’t on a tour we were completely lost trying to figure out what we were doing and seeing. The Sistine chapel was amazing but I just couldn’t enjoy it. I can best describe the experience using a football comparison. Imagine a full MCG emptying at the end of a big game except instead of it taking minutes; you are stuck with these people for 3 hours. Not good.

All you do in Rome is roam around and see the sights. There is so much opportunity for photos. Guided tours are great but its tiring out there in sun. We quite enjoyed our visit to the Villa Borghese, a private gallery on the edge of the city. Its set in beautiful gardens but for reasons unknown to everyone the only way you can see this is to book well in advance (unlike the Vatican), which I did and have a tour guide take you through. The Art collection is one of the best in the world, and for non art lovers like me the tour guide is able to bring the Art to life getting you to notice all kinds of things you wouldn’t have seen if you just rocked up and stared at the picture. The stories of the pictures are quite interesting and the gallery contains works by Caravaggio and Bernini. Another highlight was a restaurant we stumbled upon when looking for a place to eat one night. The restaurants are scattered about everywhere so how does one know where to go but the rule is to try and avoid tourist areas because they cost a lot more. We ended up in a restaurant where the waiters all wore white pharmacy jackets, didn’t speak much English and was downstairs so I felt like I was on a boat. The problem was that all the waiters were run off their feet like Manual in Fawlty towers and would be rushing around frantically doing things but whenever someone needed their attention they would walk away. They weren’t particularly nice to the customers either. It was great fun watching people try to get the waiters attention and then they would get it, ask one question, the waiter would walk away but they actually wanted more. Of particular amusement to me on this trip has been watching the French tourists interact with the Italians. Now you may think this would be OK but there are major communication problems here. Neither group speaks each others language and so they resort to their 2^nd language of English, which is also quite poor. This has made for some very strange conversations.   

Over the years many people have asked why it was such a debacle when Allan and I first traveled together back in 2003 and why we would continue to travel together given there were problems. The answer is that things have since changed. In 2003 things were quite different. Allan and I were different people in a sense because we’ve changed in the years since but Europe was also more challenging for the tourist and google had only just been invented so it was difficult to plan too much of your trip online in advance. We stayed in dodgy accommodation, we often got lost looking for our hotel after a long train ride (no google maps!) , people spoke less English so it was difficult getting directions and it was unseasonably hot meaning we were getting flustered and frustrated with things and could take this out on each other. Often our hostels smelled or we found that we were sharing with 10 other guys or the hotel was in a dodgy part of town. Allan would complain about my choice of accommodation and I would get grumpy because he didn’t put any input into the planning and so you can see this was a problem. However Allan made a good point during this trip to never come to Europe until I could afford to stay in nicer places. Now this is much easier with online reviews and using my travel experience I know what to look for and I rarely strike out. Despite the tenseness of that first trip at times I still have some fond memories which I re-tell to Allan who was fortunately forgotten everything which is why he keeps traveling with me.

During our holiday together we planned to have 3 days apart whereby we could have holidays from each other. On my holiday from my holiday I decided to head to Siena. When coming to Italy the first question people ask is, “Are you going to Siena?” It’s like you have to go so I did. It’s a small city in Tuscany nestled between Rome and Florence that is very beautiful. It’s a little hilly but it’s filled with lovely little lanes, churches, piazzas and all to the backdrop of Tuscany’s countryside. I can see why so many people love it. It’s true its one of those couples destinations but it does seem to attract many different people of differing ages (so no FARTS!). It was a welcome break from the hustle and bustle of Rome and an extra day there would have been handy – maybe next time.

In Rome they speak much more English then in Sicily in and around the tourist areas but once you venture outside of these then people don’t know much English. I’ve found that Italians are very much like the Germans when you try your dodgy Italian and get something wrong. What they do is subtly repeat the word you got wrong with the correction pronunciation or article and then move on. I was warned by my Italian teacher however that if you get the word too wrong then the Italians will laugh at you like she did. I had this experience when we walked into a bar to use the toilet and buy a coffee and the bargirl asked as to whether or not we had tried a coffee called the “marocchino”. Never having heard of it I asked about this and she told me I had said it wrong and then proceeded to get me to say it right. Well she made me say it 10 times in a row, and every time I got it wrong, and every time she laughed and in the end gave up. I told Allan that it’s a tactic with European women to deliberately mispronounce the word in their native language so they laugh and think you’re funny or cute. However in my case I’m not mispronouncing the word deliberately – I really don’t know how to say it properly!

Some tips for people coming to Italy. Always have coffee at the bar. It costs 1 Euro as opposed to sitting down and paying anywhere from 3 – 8 euros. Always have a take away gelati. It costs 2 – 3 euros as opposed to 7 – 10 euros to have it sitting down. Never buy a eurrail pass for Italy (I didn’t!). Train journeys are cheap and fares are about AUD $10 - $25 between cities. A 4 day eurrail pass costs AUD $250 for 1^st class but you should know many regional trains in Italy only have 2^nd class so there is no point buying a 1^st class ticket. And a general hint – try not to use the toilet on Italian trains. Food wise Europe has been great for my intolerances as long as I avoid too much sugar, don’t each much wheat in the mornings and avoid onion and tomato I am fine. I think it’s the absence of preservatives and freshly made food that makes the difference for me here. Onion is rarely added as a default ingredient here so when you order a gnocchi gorgonzola they go away and make the cheese sauce fresh without onion. In Australia its pre made with onion. Traditional Italian recipes that don’t contain onion will never have it added in Italy – this is an Australian invention that drives me crazy. Anyways its Eurovision week this week so it will all be happening!