When in Rome
If you like the fastpass found at many well-known amusement parks, then you will love the Skip the Line offerings in certain tours available for purchase before you arrive at your destination. For us, we learned that Skip the Line and small groups were the best bet for maneuvering the summer busy time. We had six people in our first tour at the Vatican Museum whereas at the Coliseum there were 25 in our group and due to all the people, it was more difficult to stay with our guide as well as be where she was as she spoke about certain details so it was a disjointed tour and one that in hindsight we would have chosen to not do as a result. We witnessed the lines that wrapped blocks up and down the streets leading to the entrances of those without the tickets we purchased mostly in the hot sun.
From the minute your feet touch down on new soil, you are surrounded by things outside the norm of what one’s comfort zone looked like two minutes before. There is more unknown than known. It becomes an immersion into the new and different in every direction one turns along with every spoken syllable. The comfort comes in the familiar faces of the new that you have met leading up to that moment.
We learned quickly that which pushes us beyond our known limitation. The first of which was traveling without my brother who has traveled internationally to several different countries multiple times and who had a gift to understand some similar languages; the second learning how to be comfortable with being in a space of feeling lost, and recognizing that it would be better not to get unnerved by that feeling – yet learning how to be at ease with that feeling is a lesson unto itself.
If you are going to Rome and you only have a few days, the Vatican Museum is a must and having a personal driver for a couple of hours is a bonus as he took my mom and I to both the known and less known places. In addition, he was our camera guy for all the stops.
Driving and parking a vehicle are not on my bucket list for experiences in Italy. If you have seen chase scenes in movies down alleyways passed people seated at café tables, these are real. Cars parked within two inches front and back of one another and multiple rows of them from on sidewalks, at the curb, and to the left of them on the streets, this too is real. In the states, we have two lanes going in the same direction, they make three lanes in that space and there are no lane lines, everyone just merges all together at any given moment and vespas along with motorcycles, motorized scooters and the like are weaving in and out from every direction. What we saw as traffic, our drivers (bus, taxis, and personal driver) did not.
Insights from my time in Italy, extra virgin olive oil is used mainly for fresh foods such as salads and dipping bread with a meal. They use sunflower oil also grown there for heated food preparation. Alfredo sauce is not a thing there. In the Italian Alps, the white seen from afar is not snow, it is Carrera marble which is the main quarry since historic times. The coliseum uses travertine as the main material. Granite is used for columns at the cathedral adjacent to the leaning tower of Pisa, and the rest is the Carrera marble. The leaning tower of Pisa is supported or uses a banana shape to create the counterbalance.
When in Rome, the mix of new and old is on every corner along with the hustle and bustle of life.
Stay tuned for one or two more blogs from this adventure in the coming weeks.
