Rome concentrates marvelous sights and attractions into a relatively small and walk-able footprint.  The summer is very hot but much of the walking can be done in the maze of shaded alleys.  Every twist and turn of the streets reveals another magnificent church, fountain, or Roman ruin.  The food is fabulous and the Romans can be kind and generous hosts if you can get away from the tourist areas.  Still, even in such an interesting and historic city, travelling with teens needs to be planned carefully.

Tips, tricks and notes:

1. If you have never traveled with a single carry on bag then you are missing out “big time”.  It is easy, saves money, saves the wear and tear of baggage handling, makes for a lighter load and, miraculously, does not leave you wanting for items you would have packed in a bigger bag.  We bought one of these and three of these.  We were the first through customs, and didn’t pull any muscles lugging around our luggage
2. Summer in Rome is really hot BUT it is bearable.  Much of the walking can be done in the narrow streets and alleys and they are considerably cooler than the open squares.  A cool teen is a happy teen.
3. We used Rick Steves Rome 2011 guide book (now 2012).  It was like a bible.  Read it before hand.  Many sites allow you to book in advance.  Doing so allowed us to walk past a two kilometer lineup to the Vatican.  Imagine standing in 36 Celcius heat for 4 to 5 hours with teens.  I don’t think so.
4. We stayed at Hotel Smeraldo for 160 euros per night for two adjoining rooms.  That included breakfast and they arranged a taxi from the airport for 50 euros (it was at 4am).  The hotel is a 5 minute walk from Piazza Navona.  As a base it was perfect because EVERYTHING was within walking distance.   It was clean, inexpensive and centrally located.  So DO research your room online.  And DO check out the reviews and testimonials.   It matters.    Later in the trip we had to book last minute, ended up in a sweltering room and had bug bites that itched for days.
5. A/C in your room is a must.  A well rested teen is a happy teen.
6. Tips are included in the restaurant bill.  If the staff are out on the street trying to lure you in, or there is a lavish display out front written in English, then you will get a second rate expensive tourist meal.  Instead, get off into the back alleys away from the bigger attractions and go somewhere where it appears the locals are eating.
7. Don’t be surprised if there are no condiments or salt and pepper on the table.  You are eating the cook’s masterpiece.  If it needs salt, then salt was already added.
8. Expect to pay between 60 and 100E for dinner and around 40E for lunch
9. Water comes in “naturel” and “frizzante”.  Your teens might not like the latter because it is carbonated.
10. Street vendors will sell you a 330 ml bottle of water for 2 euros and a coke for 3 euros.  Instead, find a grocery store because they will sell you a six pack for less than that.  It’s even cheaper if you buy no-name.
11. We refilled our water bottles every chance we got at the outdoor drinking water fountains.  Liam was afraid to drink it but Aidan, Annette and I did and suffered no ill effects.
12. Dress in light colored synthetics and yes shorts are ok.  Synthetics dry quickly and are NOT the polyester nightmares that your great-aunt wore.  We brought zip-off convertible pants and they worked well.
13. If you want to fit in a bit, then make sure you stay away from clothes covered in logos and wear a shoe that isn’t blatantly athletic.  We didn’t see a single baseball cap but many people wear Tilley style hats to keep the sun off.
14. Some churches require that your shoulders are covered and women can buy one of the inexpensive shawls from the plethora of vendors for a couple of Euros if they need one.
15. Jeans would be terribly hot plus they don’t dry quickly if you wash them.  The Italians DO wear jeans and they are more often than not higher end designer brands.
16. In general Italians seem to dress up a bit more than we do.  Women wear more dresses and skirts and they buy their clothes so that they fit properly (no oversized baggy clothing).
17. We all wore Keen or Merrell shoes.  Annette wore a pair of comfortable sandals and they destroyed her feet on the first day.  Sandals appear to be very bad news.  Oh…you’ll do 90% of your walking on cobble stones.  My normally sedentary sons walked for as long as 12 hours a day without complaint.  What’s with that?
18. Pack a super lightweight day-pack in your bag.  You can carry drinks, snacks, wipes, tylenol, bandages (for blisters) and your maps and guide books.
19. In 6 days we saw dozens of churches, Piazza Navona, Castel Sant Angelo, The Vatican, St. Peters, The Colosseum, The Pantheon, The Forum, Palatine Hill, The National Museum, Villa Borghese and the Borghese Gallery, The Trevi Fountain, The Spanish Steps and MUCH more.
20. We also took a side trip by fast train (270E round trip for 3) to Naples (Napoli) where we caught the Circumvesuviale commuter train to Pompeii.  It delivers you to the door of the ruins.  It was AWESOME and 38 degrees.  Bring water and wear sunscreen.
21. We took about 4000 pictures.  An 8 gig SD card should cover it.  You can buy another one if you run out.  I had a 32 gig card and could have taken 4000 more pictures than the 1400 I did take.
22. A compact decent quality camera will do the trick for most situations.  We like Sony because they have a cool panorama feature that we used a lot.  Mine was a step up to a larger sensor in the Sony NEX-3.  It was the most useful for taking shots in low light conditions like at night or in galleries where flash is not allowed.
23. The favorites for my teenage sons were the Colosseum, the Forum, The Pantheon, Palatine Hill, The church of San Giovanni in Laterno, Villa Borghese and the National Gallery.  They were less impressed with the Vatican, St Peters and the Spanish steps because of the massive summer crowds.
24. Other highlights for the boys (and us) was the fabulous gellati, Italian pizza (“Dad, how can pizza taste this much better than at home?’), the abundance of Smart cars, the crazy drivers and the intricate maze of alleys.  They also marveled at how the most unobtrusive doorways could open up into a sprawling grocery store.  Also surprising for me was that my teens actually enjoyed the art and I have a very special memory of us all lying on our backs in the National Gallery, taking in the intricacies of a beautiful ceiling fresco.

Have fun, travel soon.

John McKay, September 2011

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Then someone nice gives you a call and is so positive that you smile.

Then you ask the boys if, on the off chance, they might consider contemplating, the possibility of riding my coveted Rocky Mountain race bike beside me while I run in the dark?  Who am I kidding?  They’re on their computers.

Then, I decide that bed is a better option, I get a drink, and Aidan brings in the dogs.

Now Aidan, to be fair, rides beside me a lot.  he always has.  But wait…

“What was that about a bike ride in the dark?”, Liam asks.

So we’re back.  Ran 7.5km on dark trails and quiet streets.  Liam rode and lit the way with my Petzl head lamp.  And we talked.

Life is very very good.

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I grew up in a world where we opened the door for an elderly person, a lady, or someone whose arms were full.  When we asked someone for a favour, we made sure that it was repayed in kind.   We imposed ourselves as little as possible on others, helped wash up at dinner, and gave our friends and family our full attention when we were with them.

In those days we knew that it was wrong to be a “gossip”.  We kept our mouths closed when we had nothing good to say.  We were generous when praise was warranted.  We assumed that everyone else was as busy as we were, and we understood that we were not that close to the center of the universe.

“Please” and “Thank you” were a reflex back then.  Courteous language was a currency that when traded, and saved, yielded tremendous returns.  We tried very hard not to interrupt others when they were speaking, out of respect, and we tended to hear a lot more, as a result.  Four letter words were avoided, not because were were puritans, but because we knew we could do better, and because we had a wider vocabulary.

Seldom were we late.  Communication was not as casual back then either.  When we got a message we called back right away.  When we were invited to an event we RSVP’d.  We were predictable and we were trustworthy.

These days that courtesy seems to be gone.  The tragedy is that the rules and rituals by which we lived made us consider that other people had lives and hopes and struggles very similar to our own.  Now we impose on others because we have lost touch with what it was to be polite.

Email and MSN, and Blackberry’s, and voicemail make my life easier everyday.  But the role models for my daily interactions remain people like my mother, who sets a very very high standard for courtesy and caring, and Annette who has a very busy life and yet always makes time for her friends and family.

I have two teeneagers to raise.  They find such dicussions irrelevant in their world of one line texts and multi-multi-multi tasking.   Getting them to understand the importance of manners is sort of like trying to push an elephant through a funnel.  The subject is huge and the focus is narrow.   As Dilbert says  “I guess that will be handy if you ever get a call from 1993″.  Maybe I am becoming a relic.

It is not always easy to be polite.

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