Living Roman for a Few Days

You might be expecting a post about visiting various ancient sites, art, or other tourist-oriented things in Rome.  This is not a post about that, because we didn’t do any of those things.

As some people who know us know, we often do not follow a “checklist” of sites to see when we visit various places in the world.  Sometimes we choose to see some well-known sites, but not always.  In the case of Rome this year, we had intended to possibly see a few but decided against it in the end.

We had somewhat of an ordeal getting to our Airbnb in Rome.  Things started fine – we were able disembark our cruise ship in a relatively leisurely manner, took a bus from the port directly to the train station, and took a train to Roma Centrale station with a little confusion but no issues to speak of.

We were starving by the time we got there, so we contacted our Airbnb host to let her know that we were going to eat lunch at the station first and then take a taxi to the Airbnb.

Lunch was enjoyable – good sandwiches and beverages.

Refreshed, we went to find a taxi and that’s when an unexpected hiccup in our plans occurred.  We had seen many taxis waiting before we had lunch, so we assumed some would be in that same spot.  There were no taxis there.  We waited for a while, and none showed up.  Eventually, Kevin flagged one down.  I showed the driver the address of our Airbnb, and he said “No, it’s not worth it to me.  The King of England is in town, and you can’t get there.”  Hmmm… didn’t expect that.

So, we contacted our host, and we determined that we were going to have to take the subway and then a tram to the apartment.  It took a while to find where to take the subway, but we found it.  We had our luggage and were packed in like sardines, so to say that those four or so stops and then fighting our way to the exit were less than pleasant would be an understatement.  Then we had trouble finding where “tram #2” was.  For a while we waited for “train #2”, but that was across a plaza from where we were supposed to be (thank you to the kind man who somehow knew we were in the wrong place).  We eventually found the tram, might or might not have figured out how to pay for it, and ended up in front of our apartment where our host met us.  All of this was exhausting and a reminder for us of why we don’t necessarily like traveling in big cities or where there are big crowds.

When we go to big cities we usually stay mostly in our immediate neighborhood, and that is what we ended up doing for the rest of our few days in Rome.

What we had been looking forward to about this trip to Europe in general is staying in Airbnbs (or similar) so that we can shop in local markets and cook our own food.  We both love cooking, and learning what it is like to live somewhere, as much as you can during a short visit.  When we traveled to Europe in the past, we rarely had kitchen facilities.

After getting checked in, we found a local supermarket and bought a few things.  After a nice simple meal and some wine, we settled in and relaxed.

We spent the next few days taking local walks, shopping for and cooking our own food, and doing normal everyday activities like laundry, reading, and planning future travel.  Basically, we spent our time like we would if we lived in the Roman neighborhood of Flaminio and had no reason to go into the city.  It was a nice and relaxing kickoff for our European trip, and the right thing for us, even if it isn’t what most people visiting Rome for the first (and probably only) time would do.