My first impression of Romans: These people are on the GO! My second impression: They live for dinner. In just three short days, we saw it all -what Rome is like sunny, rainy, during the day, night, weekday, weekend and on holiday. I love the mixer of the new with the ancient architecture. This is a three part summary of my observations while in Rome. This first part features a short film of a some of the major sights in Rome. There is a mistake in the film captioning, maybe you can spot it.

Auto Madness

A taxi from Leonardo Di Vinci Airport cost 60 Euro for three people to get into town, there is no meter. The ride back from the city to the airport costs 50 Euro. In terms of obeying the universal rules of the road, our driver into town was just short of mad for American standards and ludicrous for German. But he wasn’t alone. Tailgating is common, driving slower or the same speed as the right lane in the left lane is common, making 3 lanes from a one lane street is also common. The driver never cursed or made obscene gestures, which held my level of WTF down to a few wide eyed, nervous giggles. Don’t even think about riding a bicycle in the city. You will die. Seriously.

Language Barriers

My appetite is either larger than the two men I’m with or I’m just hungry more often. I made us stop at a Cafe that sold sandwiches, panino and tramezzino. They offer them cold or hot. But in Italian, the word for ‘hot’ is caldo, which we (Alex and I) mistook for the German kalt. Opps! The most important two Italian words I learned donne and uomini, women and men -sometimes there were no english translation. I kept saying the name of the B&B street address wrong, Via Palmero instead of Via Palermo. An inherited trait I like to affectionately call, a case of the dads. I was the brunt of the joke from the master of five languages Belgian. :tongue2:

Coffee Bean

Our first Cappuccino did not fall short of expectations. I can’t describe it, you just know that it’s exact what you want. The bitterness comes from the price. Our 2005 German tourist guide said that cafe was günstig, a bargain compared to those sold in Munich. Apparently, inflation has caught up across the EU. A Cappuccino ranged in price from 3.00 to 4.50 Euro. We paid a whopping 6 Euro per Cappuccino at the historic Antico Caffe Greco on the Via Condotti (a street compared to Maximilianstr. in Munich or Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills)

Street Walk Sightings

Along the Via della Concillazino toward the Vatican, massive palms grow in pots, some of the roots have split the clay. Seagulls fly over head and make a sound much different from those I remember in Florida. Most of the street merchants are illegal, I presume. They sell knock-off Prada sunglasses, thick DG belts, ladies handbags hang from their arms when the police are near by. Speaking of ladies, there was an Italian beauty queen for every corner of every intersection. If you walk passed a certain water fountain, the water smells perfumed.

Tags: language barrier, transportation, video