This is a much overdue wrap-up post on our trip to Rome.  I’ve had the majority of this written for weeks, but it’s amazing how busy life gets once you’re back home!  Below are some interesting things we encountered that we didn’t capture in our other posts.  We want to make sure we remember them so we thought we’d share with everyone!rome

Catholic Church:  Julia, our guide to Tuscany, had some interesting comments on Vatican and the Pope.  We will never know the full story, but it was certainly very interesting to hear the perspective of a native Roman.  That’s the wonderful thing about travelling – it opens your eyes to things you never thought to question!

• Vatican:  There is a lot of resentment from the Italian people toward the Vatican because they don’t pay taxes and don’t disclose their finances.  (According to Julia) the Vatican has a lot of money in Swiss bank accounts but doesn’t disclose the amount to the Italian public. Apparently, a few years ago, Switzerland was forced to disclose all the money it had from Italy.  However, the Vatican was exempt from this.
• Pope – Julia said that it was obvious that the Pope was forced to resign.  Hmm. .. most of us non-Catholic tourists did not find this so obvious.  We’d read in the US newspapers that he’d left office because he didn’t feel he had the mental capacity to continue in his position. Also, that it was a testament to his leadrership that he recognized this fact and resigned.  Well, Julia (whom I am assuming at least represents the position of quite a few other Romans) had a different view.  She indicated that he was going to open up the Vatican bank records and be more transparent.  Then, all of a sudden, his private diary goes missing and he then resigns.  Was the diary stolen and something found to blackmail him?  Who knows, but she felt he was somehow forced/blackmailed out of office.  Another interesting fact is that the pope resigned right before the Italian presidential election.  The pope apparently plays a huge role in the election of the next president.  There was already a lot of unrest in Italy before the election (30% unemployment) and the pope’s resignation added fuel to the fire.  As an FYI, the last pope that resigned was over 600 years ago.

Coffee: Italian’s love their coffee.   And by coffee, I mean espresso.  In the mornings, they go to their local coffee house (bar), order an espresso, and drink it like a shot.  Seriously, the cup has no more than 3 tablespoons of liquid in it, and the entire transaction takes less than 2 minutes.  They walk up to the bar, order the espresso, down it like a shot, and leave.   There are no “to go” cups available.  Coffee is meant to be consumed in

the bar.  For a city that loves coffee, surprisingly there are no Starbucks.  That just goes to show that their ritual of coffee drinking is very different than ours and is not something that is likely to be changed.  I don’t see paper Starbucks cups in their future. However, we missed our “big cup of joe” and the option to take it with us!

Piazza:  A piazza is like the living room of the neighborhood.  People gather here to chat, eat, play,etc; there’s always something going on there! Piazza’s were one of our favorite things about Rome – especially “our” piazza, Santa Maria.  All day, every day there was a mix of some type of performer (bubble maker, fire dancer, clown, etc) kids playing soccer, gelato eaters, and just residents hanging out on the steps of the fountain.  It really was wonderful and truly seemed like the heart of the neighborhood.

How Do You Say That?:  Our neighborhood is Trastevere, pronounced “Tras –TAY-  veh  reh”.  However, Aunt Cindy lives in her own neighborhood that’s pronounced “Tras-tee-VERY”.   She says it with gusto and a fake Italian accent so it must be right.  For some reason mom is capable of saying pizza correctly (the zz = T ), but she must pronounce piazza as “pee-ahh-zuh instead of “pee-ot-zuh”.  Somehow the “zz=t” isn’t translating for her!

Our Neighborhood:  We stayed in the Trastevere neighborhood which is just on the other side of the Tiber river in Rome.  We absolutely loved the neighborhood – it’s been described as the Greenwich Village of Rome.  There were great restaurants everywhere, and people were always in the Santa Maria Piazza.  It really felt like a great community, and we were lucky to be a part of it for a week!

Our Apartment:   Apartment rentals are the way to go!  We had a great experience from pickup/return at the airport to the actual apartment.  It was so nice to have space to spread out and the free wi-fi was great – it’s a must have for future trips.  There were certainly things that were different:  the washer was outside and there was no dryer, the shower wasn’t great and we had to use the handheld shower most of the time.  There were no washcloths (thankfully, we brought some!), and  there are multiple bins in which you put your trash:  organic, plastic/glass, other.  They all had separate days that we were supposed to take them outside.  We should have taken notes at check-in because we couldn’t remember the rules for all the bins so we left our recyclables on the counter.  Hopefully the cleaning person put them in the right spot!   Also, the artwork was very “Roman” – see below.   Overall, the place was fantastic, and I wouldn’t hesitate to stay there again.

The Food:  Italians love their carbs!  Each meal starts with bread and restaurants typically charge € 1-2 ($1.5-$3) per person for this “service charge.”  I guess this is fair given that tips are really small (you typically just round up to the nearest Euro or leave a couple of Euros).  Pasta is the first course followed by a meat/seafood for the second course.   We never ordered both the first and second course – we just picked one and skipped the other!  The house wine is fairly cheap (yay!).  It ranged from 8 euros to 18 euros for a bottle of the house wine.  Much less than what you would pay for a bottle in the States!  Limoncello is a popular after dinner drink – it’s strong but refreshing and delicious!

Needless to say, we all had a fantastic time and are already planning our next trip.  I’ll officially sign off from our Roman adventure with the photo below.  Here’s to Uncle Don!