Rome, 2005 --- Comments

Last Updated: July 5, 2005
In June of 2005, I visited Rome for a week with my wife and daughter. On this page, I give a few travel tips and other comments.

Guide Books

We used the Rick Steves Rome guide book. I have mixed feelings about it. On one hand, I feel its discussion of hotels and Rome in general is good. Certainly, the book is worth buying just for the discounts it gets you in the hotels he mentions. On the other hand, his descriptions of the art in the various museums leads me to feel that Rick Steves should subtitle his books "Teaching Dumb Americans to be Ugly Americans." It may be that I don't appreciate his humor, but then again, maybe I do appreciate his humor. To be fair, he does note the major/important pieces of art in the museums and churches, which is useful, and his historical overviews of many things are interesting. It's when you follow his tour of the museums, etc., that I found his humor fell flat.

One comment on guide books in general is that their review of the sights is one person (or group's) opinion. For Rome, realize that there are four major categories of things to see: Ruins and Ancient Buildings; Musuems; Churches; and other city sites (such as fountains, plazas, etc.). My recommendation for those using the Rick Steves' Rome book is to decide which of these categories you are most interested in (if it's the last one, then try another guide book). Then visit all of the 3* sights in Rick Steves' book, and then shift to visiting all of the sights (2*, 1*, no star) in the category in which you're interested.

For me, I liked visiting the ruins, etc., and wish I had skipped one or two museums and visited a couple more ruins (I figured out early that I wasn't very interested in churches, and didn't visit very many because of that).

I do recommend getting some guide book to Rome, just because there is so much to see, and just having a list of places to visit is useful.

Archeology card

You can get an Archeology card (22 euros in 2005) that gets you in to 9 of the sites (Colessium, Palentine Hill, Bathes of Caracalla, Museum of Bath, National Museum of Rome, and the Tomb of Cecilia Metella were the ones we went to).

If you're not in Rome for long, skip the Archeology card and (of the sights covered by the card) just go to the National Museum, the Colessium, and Palentine Hill (go to Palentine Hill before the Colessium, since it covers both sites and has a short line or no line at all).

If you're in Rome for longer and you like ruins, then get the card and add the Bathes of Caracalla and one other sight (sorry, I don't have a strong recommendation on the others). When we went, the machine that reads the cards didn't work very well, and several places would just take your card and cross off the place you were about to visit. But at the Colessium and Palentine Hill, they just let you in (after the machine didn't like your card), without crossing anything off. This means that you could visit multiple times if you wanted...

My Top Six List

  1. Ostia Antica
  2. Colessium
  3. Roman Forum
  4. Castel St Angelo
  5. Palentine Hill
  6. Bathes of Caracalla

Traveling with an infant

We took our 19 month old daughter with us to Rome. We took both a baby carrier and a stroller. In Rome, we mostly used the carrier (the stroller doesn't work well on what passes for side walks on many of the streets, and of course a stroller would be painful to take up and down stairs, particularly if you take the Metro). Using the carrier worked well for us: our daughter slept a lot, and keeping her in the carrier meant we could do almost everything we wanted without any problems. You'll still want to take a stroller for using in the airports.

Because we were traveling with our daughter, we didn't go to very many restaurants, and we didn't see Rome at night. In particular, it would have been nice to see the Colessium at night.

Food costs

We thought the restaurants were expensive, and for most of our meals (except breakfast, which was included at the hotel) we bought bread, etc., at a grocery store near our hotel and made sandwiches.

Metro, buses

We used the Metro and the buses a lot. Since we were in Rome for just over a week, we bought one week passes. There are also one day passes, and three day passes. I highly recommend getting a pass (or passes) for the amount of time you're in Rome, since then you're more likely to take the public transportation.

After arriving in Rome, stop at a Tourist Information booth and ask for a bus map. The map is a reasonable map of Rome, with many of the tourist sites listed (albeit in Italian - the Rick Steves guide book lists most sights in both English and Italian, which came in useful with this map). I found the map a bit hard to read (it lists which buses stop at each bus stop, but doesn't really show the bus routes), but eventually my strategy for using the map was to go to a bus stop and check which buses at that stop went to a stop listed on the map near my destination.

The buses will take you closer to your destination than the Metro, but the Metro tends to be quicker (even when you include extra time to walk to it), since the Metro runs underground and doesn't have to wait for traffic.

I recommend picking a hotel that's reasonably close to a Metro stop.

Crime

The Rick Steves' guide book talks a lot about protecting yourself from pickpockets, about the gangs of children who steal your belongings, and about other (non-violent) crime. We didn't have any problems, nor did we witness any. But having been forewarned, we were cautious, which may have helped us avoid being targeted.

Weather

We went in early June. The weather was great (highs of 20-30C), with it being slightly on the warm side most of the time (but towards the end, the temperature dropped, and it was slightly on the cool side). We returned home to 32C temperatures (with high humidity), and Rome felt cool in comparison. Later in June, however, the temperature in Rome rose to 35C, which would have been very hot with the sun that far south.