Walking the streets of Rome...

Walking the streets in Rome is like walking inside of a painting - there are ruins and statues everywhere you look.   My eyes are overwhelmed by the beauty set before me.   I can stand at an intersection, spin around in a circle and take a dozen photos but still not do justice to what my eyes see.   In the middle of all the historical beauty is a city alive with modern day chaos.  Every day there are thousands of people walking the streets or zooming by in tiny cars or on motor scooters.  I have seen intersections that have no stop lights but somehow the cars, scooters, motorcycles, city busses, tour busses, bike riders, and walkers all work in concert with one another and the flow of motion somehow works.  And, unlike Chicago, you don’t hear the constant honking of horns.   The only time I hear a horn honked is when a car is parked in by another vehicle.   Then the driver just holds down the horn until someone shows up to move out of their way.

Some intersections have crosswalks, but most do not.  The secret to crossing a very busy street without one, I have learned, is to just step off the sidewalk and look directly at the driver as they approach.  If you look directly at them, they will slow down long enough for you to pass in front of them.  If you don’t look, they will continue on at full speed as if you are invisible.  My landlord told me “you must look at the driver to get their attention and become their friend and then they won’t want to run over you.”   Scooters, on the other hand, are like arrogant snobs who rule the road.  They dart in and out of the traffic flow and assume the walkers will move for them, which they do for the most part.  If the walker does not see the scooter and forces them to stop, the scooter driver usually has something to say about it.  And if both the scooter driver and walker are Italian, hand gestures are also involved.   But overall, the citizens of Rome seem to have great patience for the tourist that clog their streets and what should be a chaotic scene somehow becomes a lovely waltz that everyone seems to figure out how to dance to.