At the Coliseum



The line to get in is behind the line in front, which is of people looking at the line to get in. It's longer inside. If you time it right, though, you can almost breeze through.

Ancient Rome is one of the sub-themes of my trip (gelato and Chianti are among the others), so naturally I had to visit the Coliseum, even though I've been there before. It's a lot more tourist-oriented than most of the outdoor ruins, which is both good and bad - there's an admission charge and a long security line. There are also tour groups; as elsewhere in Italy, you can cut the line by joining a tour. English speaking guides - most of them look like British college kids on vacation - hawk their tours to people waiting in line.

I didn't take the tours, so I don't know if they're a good deal or not; my guess is that they're probably worth it if a) you know very little about the Coliseum and/or Roman history, or b) the line is long and the weather is hot.

Another way you can "cut" is by buying a pass ahead of time on-line. I bought an archaeological pass that allowed entrance to a number of different sites, including the Forum (basically across the 'street'). After I got through security - not exactly onerous - collecting the ticket wasn't hard, and I was free to wander through the first and second centuries on my own . . .



They built a partial deck to give you an idea of how the flooring worked. There were two levels below, where they kept the animals and slaves.


The Coliseum has to be Rome's number one tourist attraction, and there are a number of tourist-oriented free-lancers around. I haven't seen the outright scammers I saw in Florence there; maybe I'm not looking hard enough, but my sense is that the authorities here have a somewhat better sense of propriety.

Or maybe my cynicism is just being melted by the heat . . .

There was a gypsy lady with four parakeets, all with clipped wings. She sat by the curb of the ancient road, the birds on her box - she wasn't selling them, so what was she doing with them? Getting kids to hold them, I guess, and maybe for that someone would toss a Euro or two. Except all the kids around her seemed to be family . . .

But far and away the best free-lance attraction were the guys dressed up as ancient Roman legionnaires, etc., who would pose with tourists for 5 Euros, hairy legs and all.




For 5 Euro, you too can conquer Rome, or at least a Roman . . .


One of these guys, working the crowd by himself up near the Forum, had a British accent. I was going to ask him if he'd run into Arthur while on duty in the far-flung reaches of the empire, but he was busy making faces to a tall, dark German girl . . .

Welcome to Roma; give me your money



From the company website . . . Termini doesn't look quite as cool as that in real life, but it is better than Penn Station.


Cash only

We took a train from Florence to Rome. The ride was late but uneventful - I even remembered to cancel my ticket.

Roman cab drivers are notorious thieves, especially when they pick up people at Termini, and the one who picked us up was no exception. Drove us a few blocks out of the way, then tried to charge us twice for the bags. I showed him - made him change a big bill.

Twenty bucks for six blocks . . .

I'd say karma will get him but not the way he drives . . .

The guys at the restaurant where we had a late lunch more than made up for it with complimentary limoncello . . . hey, it wasn't my fault they left the bottle...

Carpaccio e popo

So I dumped on tourist restaurants, but there are plenty of good places to eat in Florence. Ristorante Ricchi on Piazza Santo Spirito isn't considered anything "special," but they have a fantastic carpaccio di pesce -- thinly sliced fish, which the night I was there included lightly grilled (I think) squid. And fresh sardines which, needless to say, were nothing like what you're thinking of.

Even in the center city, there are great places. One that's not in the guide books is the hotel restaurant at Sofitel, which is just down the street from the Duomo. The place was empty - the bus loads of tourists must have just left - but the octopus and pasta were outstanding.

Don't ask the prices, though.

Smile while I rip you off


Out in the small Tuscan towns, even the ones that are basically tourist traps, people are generally nice and extremely honest with strangers.

Florence, however, is a different story. The areas outside the city center - where real people live - are fine, as friendly as you could wish for, but the closer you get to the Duomo, the more you have to watch for scams. Most of them are either obvious or dumb - the guy at the bar who tried to charge me for a coffee I didn't have (dumb, since you're required to give customers a bill with everything listed), the vendors who sell paper cut up dolls that supposedly dance (a hidden string helps, though of course they fail to mention that).

For the most part, the restaurants in the tourist areas are pretty upfront about how they're ripping you off - a pizza for one can cost 10 Euros ($16), and a plate of spaghetti's in the same neighborhood. That's pretty much how it is near any tourist attraction, worldwide. Truth is, the real problem is the exchange rate; a year and a half ago the price - adjusting for the location, of course - wouldn't have seemed outrageous at all. And usually, the tourist-oriented food in Italy is still fairly decent, more than the equivalent of what you'd get at a similar venue in NYC. Or at least I think so; I try to avoid obvious tourist traps in my hometown.

I generally avoid them in Italy, as well, but in this case I had to stop for lunch at a little dump of a place called Donnini Pasticceria, which translates roughly as "Eat here only if you're an imbecile, which is how the staff will treat you."

The place gave dumps the world over a bad name. The pizza appeared to have been cooked the day before Julius Cesar was assassinated; the spaghetti was in his lunch box when he spit on Brutus. The uni-sex restroom - common in Italy - wasn't clean enough to puke in.

No biggie, even if the prices were absurdly high. I could have lived with it all had the waiter-hawker-maitre de above, who after taking the bill came back with my change and said rather confidentially, "You know, the tips are never included in Italy."

Now that's almost true - tips and charges for service are rarely added to the bill in restaurants frequented by Italians. But in tourist areas especially, many restaurants add both a cover charge and, very occasionally, a service charge as well. Techincially, the cover charge is usually listed as a charge for bread, per person, and appears that way on the bill. 2 Euros is pretty common. I don't know if that's to get around some obscure Italian law or established custom. One custom I do know that's very established is tipping - as a rule, Italians don't. And they don't feel bad about it either. (Tourists are often semi-expected to leave about a ten percent tip; if you're with Italians, though, they'll generally talk you out of it as bad form.)

But I digress.

As I said, some restaurants in tourist areas charge for both - and they even say they do. As this one did, right on its menu. So obviously my friend thought I couldn't read, English or Italian.

I neglected to tip him. An oversight, surely.

But what the hey. I guess he didn't hold a grudge, because the next day he smiled when I returned with a camera to take his picture ... next to the sign that said service was included in the bill...

The moral of the story: steal from me if you must, but don't treat me like a complete imbecile when you do it. A run of the mill fool will do.

Hotel minibars

So we're in Florence.

The beer in my hotel's minibar is 7 Euros. At the current exchange rate, that's somewhere around $11.66.

Makes the prices at Yankee Stadium look cheap.