When in Rome...

Maybe you don't want to do what the Romans do?

The in-laws spent the last three days in Rome. They're back in Venice now, and they said they didn't really care for Rome very much. I happen to like Rome personally, I thought for a big city, it wasn't that bad. That said, since it is a big city, I consider it a place to visit for a few days, but not to live in. I much prefer the countryside myself as a place to be most of the time.

They took a very early morning train from Venice and arrived fairly early in the day on Thursday. Apparently, the first thing they saw when they stepped out of Termini, was a woman who squatted down in the middle of the street, in the crosswalk between the side entrance of Termini and the McDonalds, and proceeded to pee(!) in the middle of the road. I've been a lot of places, I've never personally witnessed anything like that.

After that excitement, they went to the Colosseum and the Forum/Palatine Hill. They did like the hostel I told them to book a room at. The Alessandro Downtown is one of my favorite hostels. They booked a private room obviously, and said that the staff were lovely.

The second day they got up early to go to the Vatican, and the father-in-law got his pocket picked on the metro. Luckily all he lost was a small coin purse with about five euros in it. There were men on the metro who were pushing into them, and of course, they were thieves. When I travel, I don't let people touch me. If you're touching me, you need to back the flip off or I'm gonna stick my hiking boot up your arse! And I don't care how crowded the train is either. You can keep some space between us.

Eh, but when I travel, I look like a poor backpacker, so no one's bothered (that I know of anyway) to pick my pocket. If they had, they'd have not gotten anything. 

Anyway, the mum-in-law enjoyed the Vatican. She said she loved the hall with all the animal sculpture and then she joked that when she becomes Pope she's going to live there, in the hall with the animal statues. I thought that was pretty funny. They walked back to the hostel from the Vatican, about a three mile walk, and I had written down for them how to get to all of the sites they ought to see, like the Pantheon, the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish steps. I'm assuming their walk back to the hostel was uneventful, although the mum-in-law did mention that the Spanish steps were over-run with Carabinieri, which is a good thing. Gotta keep the criminal scammers in check, or you scare away all the tourists (something that Pisa could stand to learn from). I just did not feel safe walking around Pisa with all of the scamming men running around shoving fake goods in my face.

Today the in-laws went to Ostia Antica. It's a very nice place and they did enjoy it, although they said that a lot of the site was closed, possibly because of the weather, or winter. They saw all they could and spent the better part of the day there. They went back a little early and the hostel let them stay in the common area, which I told them was quite common with hostels, they often will let you make use of the common area on your day of arrival before check-in and on the day of departure after check-out, because quite a few backpackers like taking night trains to their next location.

They said the train was packed on the way back to Venice. Trenitalia had been offering 2 for 1 fares on Saturdays, so I suppose a lot of people were taking them up on that deal.

They come back on Tuesday evening and I'll be glad. We're watching their dogs while they are gone, and I gotta tell ya, their dogs are annoying little bastards. Especially the pug Auggie. The chihuahua Rosie isn't much better. I don't care for chihuahuas, never have. I prefer labs, because they are loving and sweet. Chihuahuas just want to eat your face off and yip annoyingly for no apparent reason. I've never met a chihuahua that wasn't neurotic.