Rome Traffic Report

   So many things in our travels have defied expectations, that we were actually surprised when Italy´s traffic lived up to its!  While there were many bicycle sharing kiosks setup around the city, who would want to ride them when faced with the eat or be eaten driving is beyond me!  In our two bus rides, we saw two extremes.  One bus went cautiously allowing even cars to cut him off (just goes to show you how aggressive cars are), but the other bus chased people (literally) off the sidewalk, cleared the streets, and yet still had time to stop in the middle of the road to tell another driver off.  Fortunately we did not need to go into the 4 mile gridlock traffic we saw both coming in and leaving the city. 

   What about the Rome airport?  Still terrible.  Remarkably, when we came into the Rome airport earlier in our trip, one of our delicate bags had been tossed about by an uncaring security person after we had been on WWI era planes through AlItalia with broken lights, window shades and no seat bottom cushions.  One and one half months later we saw the same security officer take us through security and make fun of a poor mother who kept setting the metal detector off while carrying her infant in her arms.  Rather than have a private or special screening for this mother of three, this security official´s bright idea was to have the mother push her infant who could not walk without a hand through the screener alone all the while laughing at the mother.  I have had better service with cell phone companies than at this airport! 

   But maybe train travel is better?  No.  The subway system is sort of like assisted walking.  We walked between 10 and 20 minutes to get in and out of most stations because they were poorly laid out. 

If you are lucky, then these two excellent musicians will be playing on your train.

Graffiti decorates the outside of trains quite beautifully.

If the rest of the post was not enough to convince you, look at how even the signs in the train threaten your personal safety.  In fact, I believe these sign show how the train door takes advantage of unwary passengers and then eats them for dinner.

   In summary: Either wait until teleportation is invented or expect to have bad transport in Rome!