Tag Archives: Rome

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Book Review: Rough Guide Rome DIRECTIONS

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Photo: Amazon.com

The WanderDad, the kids and I spent four fabulous days in Rome this past June. Going to Rome, showing my kids around and having them enjoy the Eternal City as much as I did the first time I visited there was an important goal for me as I planned this trip. The weather, unfortunately, was not really playing along with my plans. We sweltered in Venice and practically melted in Florence. The sun reflecting off the stone surfaces in the piazza with the famous gravity-challenged tower in Pisa meant we didn’t do much more than hit the gelato stands. I’d rather have stuck pins in my eyes than attempt to convince my children to venture up those 294 steps in that heat.

We deliberated about whether or not to visit Rome for almost two weeks. And then fate forced our hand – in the form of no available hotel rooms by the beach. We found ourselves on a late night train trundling through Tuscany on our way to the capital. My children were happy to be on the train again, back to bickering over whose turn it was to play with the Nintendo. I was stressing in the corner: worrying that if I couldn’t get the boys to engage and express an interest in the sights and attractions in Rome, our visit would be a disaster. WanderDad threw me an “honestly, woman” look and suggested that I give the boys a guidebook and let them choose what they wanted to do. Novel idea (pun intended).

As if on cue, the crescendo of bickering rose to a point where parental intervention was required and the Nintendo was confiscated. I waited for my moment, the first weighty sigh of boredom: “You’re bored. Oh dear. Hey, how about checking out this book, and picking out some things you’d like to see or do in Rome”. With that, I thrust the Rough Guide Rome DIRECTIONS into the hands of my older son. BigB took one look, pulled out his own book and buried himself in it. Score: Magical fiction with a young boy as the central character: 1; Guidebooks 0. (But then again, eight is a little young to really appreciate a good guidebook).

The RG DIRECTIONS series is a perfect guidebook for a tween:

  • Plenty of pictures.
  • Short, detailed text.
  • An Ideas section with top-5 lists to suit a wide variety of interests and activities.
  • City maps on the inner cover pages and neighborhood maps throughout the book.

CAM settled back in his seat and started flipping pages. The Ideas section caught his eye immediately. He started turning down page corners. Intriguingly, on some pages he made a 1/2 inch fold, on others a slightly larger fold and on others the whole page was folded in half. WanderDad poked me and threw me an “I told you so” look. Charming.

When CAM dropped the guidebook, I picked it up nonchalantly and in that “I don’t care, but I’ll die if you don’t tell me” way that moms can’t help but kids can spot a mile away, I asked: “So, bud, what do the turned down pages mean?” Naturally, the first response was a wearied rolling of eyes. “Jeez, Mom. The things I really want to see are the biggest folds, the things I’d like to see the medium folds, and the things I could, y’know, take or leave, the small folds”. Well, duh for me. Obvious when you put it like that.

And so, for the next four days, we organized our days around that little book and its folded pages, and we had a really enjoyable time. I used the neighborhood reviews in the book to come up with a day plan for each day. I made an executive decision to skip the museums and the churches: this was going to be an outdoors-only visit. We walked for miles exploring the neighborhoods with our trusty pocket-sized DIRECTIONS in hand (well, stuffed in my bag really). We ate at the restaurants marked on the neighborhood maps. We ate well and didn’t spend a fortune. In most of the restaurants in which we ate, we were the only tourists in sight which was a nice perk and one for which I recommend the Rough Guide very highly. The piece-de-resistance for my children was the Almost Corner Bookshop in the Trastevere neighborhood. The best selection of English-language kids books I’ve ever seen in any such bookstore. Again, we found it with the help of the little RG DIRECTIONS book.

My kids still talk about how much fun they had in Rome. I credit this guidebook with helping us to draw our children in and open up the city to them. We’re already talking about trips for 2009 and even 2010. There’s a variety of cities on our list. Here’s hoping that there are RG DIRECTIONS guidebooks available for all of them.

Click on the photo of the book at the top of the page to buy the book on Amazon.com.

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Hotel Review: Radisson SAS Rome

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I like Radisson SAS hotels. Maybe it’s the clean, sparse Scandinavian styling – almost as far away from my cluttered home as you could imagine. But, we didn’t plan to stay at the Radisson in Rome. It sort of happened by accident.

We left Lucca, having just spent a fun but busy week with family, and decided to chill at the beach for a couple of days. I was a little disappointed that I wouldn’t get to see my kid’s faces as they explored the Colloseum, but it was hot, really hot and our attempt at sightseeing in Florence a couple of days earlier had been a disaster – because of the heat. Who expects temperatures over 90F in Italy in June, really? We took the train to Viareggio. Alas, we weren’t the only ones planning to hit the beach that weekend and there wasn’t a single hotel room to be had in the town. Where to now? Our kids were hot and sticky, sitting on their backpacks on a parking strip facing a beach, waiting for us to tell them it was OK to strip and dash into the water. But it was not to be.

We had wanted to leave the last few days at the end of our trip unplanned. I don’t think either of us had imagined this happening. Maybe Rome wouldn’t be so bad. I started reading the hotel listings in our guidebook. When I read that the Radisson had a pool, I flipped open my phone. Yes! They had a room available which would sleep four. The price was steeper than I would normally even consider, but this was a situation which required extraordinary measures.

What I liked about the hotel:
Location. Right next to the Termini Station. This might have been a problem except that its at the far end of the platforms, so the noise is not a problem. And you can walk across the street to get a Metro. Extremely handy if you’re a tourist trying to use only public transit.
Room Size. We stayed in a hotel in London last year with a pull-out sofa for the kids. When the sofa was out, you couldn’t actually walk between the bed and the sofa. Teeny. This room was positively American in size.
Cleanliness & Service. Scandinavian, duh! Well, with a slightly Italian twist.
The Pool. Turned out to be a full-size, unheated, roof-top pool. A perfect place to lounge about at the hottest part of the day.

What wasn’t so good:
Location. The area around the Termini Station can be a little seedy. We spent our time either by the hotel pool or out exploring some of the prettier neighborhoods of the city.
Frightening electrical work in the hotel room. When you pulled a plug out from a socket, sometimes the whole socket came too – leaving wires carrying 200v dangling out of the wall. Not the safest around children.
The showers in the gym were cold. Not that I was using the gym or anything, but our room had a bath but no shower. When we’d checked in, I’d been OK with a bath thinking to myself that I could just use the showers in the gym if I really felt I needed a shower. Three cold showers later I was not impressed.

Summary
We found it a good base from which to explore Rome especially since we had a limited amount of time. The mini-suite which we used (sleeps 4) costs about $450/night – we did get a slightly reduced rate since we were booking last-minute. Alternatively, we were offered two adjoining rooms for $300/night each. There was a complimentary breakfast buffet every morning. This went along way towards offsetting the cost of the hotel in my mind – two pre-teen boys can eat a LOT of food.
The real test: would I stay there again? Yes, I think I would. Although next time I think I’ll ask for a room with a shower :)

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Trevi Fountain

a theme park in Rome ???

I came across Disneyland in Rome (crazy idea) today on MSNBC. At first I thought it was a joke: I mean, seriously, who would think that Rome needs a theme park ?? There’s so much to see and do in the city already. But, it seems like this is something which is actually being considered.
Rome, with over 6 million tourist arrivals annually, places 8th in Euromonitor’s Top 150 City Destinations 2007 rankings. The cities ahead of Rome in the tourist stakes include London (top spot, 15 million tourists), Paris, Bangkok and Dubai. All the same, will a theme park make that much of a difference ?
I’m a target customer for this planned ‘family-friendly attraction’ which aims to ‘show tourists what life was like in the Rome of 2,000 years ago’. I just spent some time (not enough) in Rome this past June. With husband and kids in tow (CAM and BigB, 12 and 8). We were hard-core tourists for four straight days. Your eyes would spin if I listed all the (existing) attractions we visited. Those were tiring days. We had a fabulous time. Now, if you ask them, my children consistently rank Rome as their favorite place in Italy. Would I have squeezed in a Roma-Disney if it were there? No. Not now. Not ever.
Still thinking about Rome and theme parks, this evening, I asked my kids what was their favorite thing about Rome. BigB said (and I am quoting here): “The Trevi Fountain. I just think that all the different places where the water comes out symbolizes many becoming one like everything coming together”. Wow. I’m impressed. CAM is a yard sale junkie. He chose the Porta Portese market as his top pick to visit before we got to Rome and it was top of his list today. (Although I can tell you he was utterly intrigued by the Colosseum – especially the lewd 2,000-year-old graffiti).
My vote for the Lazio area council: don’t bother with the theme park, you’ve got enough going for you already. Spend the money on keeping your city clean. Expand the metro. Police the buses to keep the pickpockets under control. Rome is a unique place, don’t spoil it.
Trevi Fountain

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