One of our stops on our big European vacation was Rome. We had never been to Italy and we were really looking forward to amazing pasta and some pretty historic sites. But there were two unexpected things we found in Rome. The first one was how friendly everyone was. It’s not that we expected rudeness or unfriendly behavior. But, when visiting large cities with heavy tourist populations, you kind of expect polite but busy and uninvested people. There are 200 more people to help after you so it makes sense if they are giving a little less energy. But surprisingly, every time we stood in line, asked a question, or inquired about something we needed, people were extremely helpful. And they seemed happy to help. Also, every time we asked for help, the answer usually included advice to skip the line and ask for their colleague-a huge time saver. I accidentally bought guided tickets to the Colosseum in Italian instead of English. And the staff quickly helped us get audio guides in English without waiting in lines despite the crowds everywhere. Will even ended up needing to visit an audiologist’s office, and everyone seemed to go the extra mile to help get what we needed.
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Another unexpected experience was the humidity. Obviously, the closer we get to summer, the warmer things will be. And we had been in Europe in May and June before. We once spent the end of June in Paris. But Italy, and as we would soon learn Greece, can be hot and pretty humid. It was the humidity that often made us more uncomfortable than the heat. And most Italian air conditioning is either weak or absent. Luckily our hotel did have air conditioning. Every day the weather app claimed a thunderstorm was imminent, but it only ended up raining on the last day.
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Despite the humidity, we did visit some pretty amazing sites, eat some yummy pizza and pasta, and get to enjoy a little of Italy before heading to Greece.
Still catching up on posting videos on YouTube. Here is our Rome video if you haven’t seen it!