Destination: Rome

Flying from northwest Spain to Rome, my discount airline had a 10-kilo carry-on limit. I don’t recall ever actually weighing my bag when packing…but it turns out it was exactly 10 kilos (22 pounds).

I had a special reason to pack light on this trip. A month ago I flew to Europe — a bit nervously — one week after a hernia operation. Ten kilos was about all I could hoist. My doctor said there was no hurry to get it fixed, but I love feeling healthy when traveling…I didn’t want to travel feeling like bits of my guts were popping out like naughty chicks in an open basket. After a month on the treadmill of Iberia, I’m fit as a flamenco guitar.

Landing in Rome, I tried to stay mentally in Spain until I got all those guidebook files finalized and emailed back to my ETBD editors. But I failed. It’s so exciting to research this great city.

Rome has a fixed taxi rate: €40 to and from the airport. On the curb a big, new, officious sign (next to the €40 sign) said the trip cost €60. I asked a cabbie what he charged; he said €60 to the center. It seemed like a scam. Later I quizzed an honest cabbie; he explained that while city cabs are limited to €40, regional cabs can charge €60 because they’ll have to dead-head back out of the city. Many dishonest city cabs seize the opportunity to point to the sign and charge tourists €60. Any cab with “SPQR” on the door is a city cab and legally can only charge €40. Scam scuttled.

My theme this trip is to help travelers stretch their dollars and maximize their experience. Rather than opt for the taxi default (i.e. just pay the €40 and get right to my hotel), I decided to do the smart budget move and rely on public transit. I paid €11 to zip into town on the train and €16 for a one-week transit pass, which will cover all my bus, metro and tram travel in Rome for my stay. And I had €13 left over to go shopping and stock my hotel pantry with five days worth of juice, water, fruit, veggies and munchies. (I was impressed by what I lugged up to my room for little more than the cost of a plate of pasta.) It took me less than an hour door-to-door (from the airplane, to the train, to the central station, onto the bus and then a 100 yard-walk to my hotel).

I’ve been here four days now and only just stepped into the Pantheon. It was literally the most crowded I’ve ever seen it — a human traffic jam slowly flowing in, then out, with parents holding their little ones high as if to make sure they had enough air. I haven’t even seen the Colosseum, Forum, or St. Peter’s yet. I’m doing lots of hotels, restaurants and odd sights that are new to me or that I haven’t seen in over a decade (my researchers visit these places annually, when I can’t).

With my favorite local guide, Francesca, I revisited Ostia Antica (Rome’s ancient seaport, which rivals Pompeii and is a simple 30-minute side trip by train from downtown) and polished up my self-guided walk, in hopes of producing an audio tour covering this site this winter. We rented bikes for a pedal through the Villa Borghese. And, even though she hates the Cappuccin Crypt (with its thousands of neatly stacked human bones, designed artfully to remind us vacationers of our mortality), I got her to take me through it, and to translate the descriptions in each boney chapel for my new guidebook edition. (One chapel has a clock, without hands, made of bones — the explanation reads, “once Sister Death takes you there, the afterlife is eternal…there is no time.”)

With each Rome visit, I book a driver for an entire day. I generally line up all the hotels in town I need to visit in smart order on a page, and we systematically visit each one. With a car I can do three days’ work in a single day. This time, I spliced in three far-away sights I had yet to see: the Museum of the Roman Resistance (about the citizens’ heroics during the Nazi occupation), the Auditorium (a wonderful contemporary “park of music” concert venue designed by Renzo Piano — outside of town but clearly the way to connect with Rome’s culture scene), and the Catacombs of Priscilla (the cute, intimate, least visited — and now my favorite — of the catacombs).

At Ostia, I was frustrated with the worthless descriptions posted throughout the site. I read several, hoping to beef up my existing guidebook coverage. The words were many but worthless. I commented to Francesca that only in Italy are fancy guides called “docents,” and that the only place in Europe I’ve ever actually heard the English word “didactic” used is here in Italy — and from people trying to impress me. Francesca taught me the Roman concept of aria fritta — literally “fried air.” The phrase describes any wording, that’s, like these descriptions, greasy and heavy but contains nothing of value. Much of what tourists read and hear in Italy is aria fritta.

My challenge is to recommend guides that give meaning to the sights without being “didactic.” Rome’s walking-tour companies are many and hard working, but they frustrate me here. I meet lots of tourists here using my guidebooks and quiz them about their experiences. When one couple said, “We just took a tour from so-and-so’s company,” I asked “And how was it?” — because I had been concerned about the quality of teaching by that outfit’s guides. They said, “The guide was a sweet 23 year old Irish kid. He rattled off dates like you couldn’t imagine. And at the Vatican Museum, he showed us how, in one tapestry, the eyes of the guy follow you when you walk across the room. He joked that ‘Maybe it’s the carabinieri.’ In another tapestry, the table actually did the same illusion trick. It followed us across the room!” That was exactly what I’d feared. They loved the tour, but I think, while they were entertained, they learned almost nothing of value.

Yesterday, I spent two hours on another company’s tour and lived through one of my biggest pet peeves: guides who tell stories of things that happened in that neighborhood (with plenty of professorial qualifiers), but don’t tie the wealth of visuals surrounding you to the people living there, past and present.

You can read a book without flying to Rome. A walking tour (which costs triple the price of that book) should connect you vividly to the place: Sit on a threshold worn by the nervous heels of a century of prostitutes…eating a fava bean picked up from the market that, for a thousand years, has sold local peasants their standard green…under the watchful eyes of a hooded heretic whose statue reminds you that he was burned on this spot because this neighborhood — even with that papal palace looking down on it — was filled with trouble makers. And this neighborhood remains, to this day, Rome’s center of non-conformity.

I visited one café which I like and recommend, in spite of its lousy food, because it’s cheap, friendly, shady, and far from the tourists while close to the Colosseum. They’ve started advertising a “Rick Steves menu”: pasta, a hamburger, and a Coke. I told them that’s no Rick Steves menu. Updating this book is like weeding a massive garden.

Hiking back to my hotel, I met a couple both dressed as if out of a safari catalog and each very short. They got really excited and (in Lollipop Guild unison) said, “We’re your biggest fans.”