Guide to Italy

I visited Rome about 30 years ago. It was full of ancient buildings like the Colloseum, Pantheon, Basilica di San Clemente, Castel Sant' Angelo, the Vatican city, Villa Borghesethe, Santa Maria Sopra Minerva, Baths of Caracalla (Terme di Caracalla), the catacombs, etc. If you like history, museums, art galleries, etc., I suppose you will like Rome. However, I have no interest in old buildings.

I do enjoy one particular aspect of Rome though. That is, being able to eat at "stalls" on the street and have your pizza served to you direct from the oven. I also enjoyed the calzone, a kind of stuffed pizza where the flat pastry is folded over the toppings. It is rather like the curry puffs we enjoyed in Malaysia.

And I did learn a bit of Italian while I was there. I could count in Italian - uno, due, tre, quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci, ..... And to my surprise, the number two (due) is pronounced and spelled practically the same way as two in Malay, which is spelled dua.

However, one thing I was warned about in Rome is pick-pockets and traders who may try to cheat tourists by short-changing them. I was told that sometimes you give a big note to purchase something, and they will give you back the change as if you have given them a smaller note. This I did not experience. But the unpleasant thing that I got was being pick-pocketed while trying to get on a bus in Rome.