It’s been almost two months since I moved to Rome to join my family for our newest chapter in adventurous living. This period has included two Airbnb apartments and a move into our “villa”; Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years holidays that allowed our whole family to be together again; several short expeditions outside the city; and an attempt to find some normalcy in everyday life outside living in a major tourist destination.
Our three abodes have been in different neighborhoods that have had amazingly different characteristics, as indeed have the apartments. Piazza Epiro, where our first rental apartment was located, is a neighborhood just outside the Aurelian Wall between Portos Metronia and Latina. It’s a family-oriented place that surrounds a communal market that has a couple dozen stalls with local entrepreneurs selling meat, cheese, bread, flowers, coffee, olive oil, etc. Around the market are typical businesses found in most Roman neighborhoods – pizzerias, gelaterias, pharmacies, grocery stores, real estate offices, a soccer club. It is a 20-minute walk to Ashley’s office and has relatively easy access to public transportation. Our apartment reflected the neighborhood a little in that it had belonged to our landlord’s mother-in-law and hadn’t been updated much. It immediately felt like we were living in “real” Rome, as opposed to a tourist trap. Ashley had already been there for two months when I arrived, and we were there together for only a couple of weeks.
Our second rental apartment was in San Lorenzo, a grittier neighborhood near Termini Train Station and Sapienza University. Though there is a lot of graffiti most everywhere in Rome, there is barely a public wall below two meters in height that hasn’t been tagged in San Lorenzo. The businesses here open later in the day into the night, and are more geared to the college crowd – small pubs, late-night pizza places, hole-in-the-wall restaurants. We only managed to touch the surface of the place in the month we were there, and were still discovering cool places in our last week (e.g., Said Cioccolateria dal 1923). We also had three gelato places within 50 meters of our apartment! Speaking of which, the apartment was off of an interior garden courtyard and had beautiful arched stoned ceilings. After a month it started to feel to me to be a little cave-like, but we were able to celebrate around a live Christmas tree and enjoyed the easy access to the main train terminal. Unfortunately, that also meant passing through an area of homeless folks, a challenge for a father needing to escort two teenage girls. But Grinzing and I both made friends at the local dog park, which we unfortunately had to avoid after dark.
And finally last Monday we were able to move into our own house in a neighborhood adjacent to Villa Ada, the second largest park in Rome, between the neighborhoods of Corso Trieste and Parioli. Ashley had found the house through an agent about a month ago, but we had to wait for our shipping container of stuff to arrive from the US, via the Panama Canal and Italian customs in Naples, before we could move in. The small row house, which we’re calling “the Villa,” is a relative rarity in Rome where most people live in apartments. It has three floors, a small courtyard behind, and a terrace on the roof. It is a few short blocks to the park and three blocks to the tram. The Parioli neighborhood is a little upscale, and indeed our street has an international Embassy on either end and many others are in the immediate landscape. There are fewer gelaterias than in San Lorenza, but we’ve been here for less than a week and haven’t yet been able to fully explore.
We tried to maintain as many of our family Christmas traditions as possible while living out of suitcases in an Airbnb apartment. With Ashley’s job we were able to ship a few things via airfreight and managed to get two boxes of our Christmas decorations here in time for the holidays. Though some Romans have Christmas trees, the tradition of cutting them is rare. So we got the biggest potted tree we could handle at the local nursery (it’s now in the Villa’s courtyard). Our American lights don’t work here either, so we had to get some new European ones. It was a little different but it still does the job.
At New Years we went to the official Roman celebration at Circo Massimo. On New Year’s Eve there was music after dark on a couple of stages (Vinicio Capossela was a surprise), fireworks at midnight, and dancing late into the evening. We got cold and left before the fireworks, but unlike back in Washington where private fireworks are mostly illegal, there were fireworks going off in all directions on our walk home. I’m not sure we missed anything. On New Year’s afternoon we headed back to the river front near Circo Massimo for more festival music, performance, and art. My favorite was a performance of 2×5 (by Steve Reich – thanks wikipedia). The 10 musicians were each in 2nd floor windows around a piazza with the conductor on a crane lift in the center. It was spectacular!
In my two months in Rome we managed to take four excursions outside the city. The first was an overnight to Orvieto, a beautiful village on the top of a hill only a short train ride from Rome. The Duomo dates to 1290 and the medieval well, complete with mule staircases down and up, were well worth the trip. After my older daughter came from University for Christmas we went to Solerno overnight to see their Christmas light festival. And we took a daytrip to Tivoli to see the fountains of Villa D’Este. All three trips were very fun and the trains were easy. But maybe the coolest excursion we’ve taken so far was to Castel di Guido to be volunteer archeologists for the day. It was fun, educational, and we got our hands dirty!
Normal life for us in Rome now consists of work, school, and unpacking boxes. Of course Ashley has the job that brought us here and my younger daughter is in her junior year at a private high school in English. That means waking up at dawn and catching the bus/tram/subway in opposite directions, and meeting back at home in the evening. I just finished my first week of immersive Italian language classes. I initially signed up for four weeks of three hours per day, but I already want to continue if my employment status remains consistent (e.g., none). Our social life mostly revolves around people from Ashley’s office, parents of other players on the school basketball team, and whichever aperitivo place we discover next. We’ve been to the ballet (Swan Lake), have tickets to an English-language comedy night, and are taking a pasta-making class next week. And Logan gets to travel with her team to Naples, Sicily, Florence, and Germany for away games! Now I just need to figure out the logistics of the ski bus.