Capisci l'Italiano?

One ongoing project is to try to tune my ear to l'italiano. I know I won't be able to listen nearly fast enough, but I'm hoping by the time I get there to be able to get a general drift. I'm kind of OK reading printed Italian from those HS Latin classes, but machine-gun fast italiano? Going to be a stretch.
So I have various Italian language CDs and tapes and I listen to them as I cruise up and down GA 400 on my way to and from work. I wish I could afford the Rosetta Stone set, but ye gods and little fishes, it's $300+ USED.
Then sometimes, before I got to sleep, I'll turn the wee Dell netbook on and tune in to one of the Italian radio stations on the Internet. http://www.listenlive.eu/italy.html has a nice list of Italian stations of various sorts from news and talk through opera, techno, etc.

A ticket, please

Now I have to find a good fare to Rome. Sadly, the lowest I've been able to find so far is the better part of $1K. About half of that is taxes and fees, which is just patently ridiculous. I'd really like to see what the taxes are exactly, who gets them and why!

However, I wasn't counting on a really cheap airfare, although I will delighted if I can come in around $800.

The Internet and Google are my friend in this search it appear.

More as things develop. This week I need to get the paperwork for the International Driver's License together.

Passport, please

The passport arrived in less time than the elapsed time from first trying to make an appointment to walking into the PO. Of course, not without some problems, but that's all been taken care of. Now, I start searching for airfare. $900 seems be be about the lowest price so far, which seems bad, but almost half of that is taxes and fees!

At last, a room that leaves room in the budget

While I was writing letters of inquiry, I ran across one more rental website, one that allowed you to make inquiries directly to the owners, so I selected about five that were small and in the area I wanted and somewhere within shouting distance of my price range. Three of them came back with preposterous quotes – one was 20% more than the quoted daily rate even after a discount, but one? Yes, one of them was pretty much exactly what I wanted although maybe a bit smaller than I’d hoped for, but with a correspondingly small 10 day rate.
At last, I had located an affordable shelter and I can begin to put the rest of the trip together. The apartment, a very tiny studio, is in a 16th century building, recently renovated with excellent reviews by prior renters. It’s in the recently rediscovered Monti area of Rome, between the Termini station and the Colosseum in an area that used to be a slum and red light district in the 18th and 19th centuries. I have already sent a deposit, balance due at check in and am entirely completely delighted. And spent a couple of hours on Google maps looking at the street – narrow and authentically shabby – and nearby businesses. There’s even an Internet café a few doors down and a laundry across the street and down a bit.

Bags and Baggage

Apparently in recognition of the fact that one really can’t travel internationally on the contents of a carry on (even though some of the “carry on” luggage I’ve seen looked like wheeled steamer trunks) most of the airlines don’t charge for the first checked bag internationally, although I believe there is a 45 lb weight limit.
I have – since the luggage meltdown in NY – purchased a small rolling suitcase made by Lucas which behaved admirably on its first outing on a business trip to Philadelphia. It came with a matching sort of purse and I was fortunate enough to find a small wheeled carryon from the same line on sale on eBay. I think those three items should be sufficient.
I’m trying to construct a packing list that will allow me to dress for comfort, warmth and reasonable neatness so that I do not cut the brutta figura that most Americans seem to do overseas in badly fitted khakis, tight jeans or shorts with t-shirts and fanny packs. One lesson that was brought home to me in England in 1995 was that dressing unlike the tourist hordes meant getting treated, in general, more like a traveler than a tourist. Now I am a tourist, I see no shame in the phrase, but all of my early indoctrination as a military dependent not to offend one’s host country makes me want to be taken as a respectful traveler. What didn’t matter in my teens and 20s matters a bit more now that I’m in my creaky mid-50s.
The clever little rolling carryon arrived today and includes a document case, a pair of slippers for the filthy floors at the TSA checkin, and a hanger bag for toiletries. Very nice and it looks as though I can strap it on top of the larger Lucas rollie once I collect it at the end of the flight.
Now to start constructing a packing list and see if it all fits. I'm thinking wool trousers (average high in February is 55F) light sweaters and turtlenecks for layering, one good plain sweater for outwear and my good coat (which will be a wear on, not a packable), plus one calf length skirt and one dress. I figure the bottoms are good for 3 wearings assuming I don't spill anything on myself - it's tops that will be the issue - pack enough, hopefully to only need two wearings? That would mean 5 shirts or sweaters. Plus underwear and shoes. Probably 2 pair of shoes above and beyond the pair I wear on the plane - two pair of walking shoes and one pair of nice flats. Heels, me and the cobblestones of Rome? Not something I'm willing to chance.
As for the rest, I'll buy things like soap and toothpaste and shampoo there, just bring the minimum of cosmetics and then my various allergy and fibromyalgia medications.
Hopefully that will leave room and poundage for the 3 guidebooks I plan to bring, one Italian-English dictionary, the wee Dell netbook, power supply and a converter. Only one of the guidebooks is bigger than a very slim paperback, the other two are quite small and one has a pocket with an excellent map. My little Nikon Coolpix, its sync cord and some extra memory cards. I particularly want to bring the computer because it will allow me to download the camera and to stay in touch with family via email, as well as ease of making museum or train reservations online vs on the phone. I also plan to download a few e-books from the public library onto it, so that I'll have my nightly reading material without lugging books or buying expensive English language books there.

Lodgings, Part 2

So cheap hotels were out, along with hostels and the convents were either way too expensive or so far out of town that I might as well stay home.

I’d heard about a company called airbandb.com that allows people to rent out everything ranging from couch space to complete apartments and started shopping their listings, but started running into the inexpensive = sketchy and/or remote vs. clean and neat and good location = crazy expensive. Even worse were the sketchy or remote places that were still expensive.

My hopes were beginning to fade. Then a web search pointed me at rentalsinrome.com. Better. More of a selection and all independent rentals, not shared spaces. Some of them appeared to have reasonable rates per night and then there was a little note about discounts for longer stays. Note, if you’ve never been to Italy, the “fixed price” is often the exception rather than the rule outside of big stores or chains. The ‘sconto or discount, is a big deal. Sometimes it doesn’t come in the form of actual cash but in some other little lagniappe. One lady describes her favorite “verdure” vendor as not haggling, but that her bag always contains the garlic and celery and carrot and herbs and other items needed to compliment the rest of her purchases. RentalinRome’s site said they offered a 5% discount which would help, along with the low season rates. Traveling solo and using less power and water offered another bargaining point as well.

But when I started looking carefully at RIR’s quoted prices, something was wrong. If you are renting for 10 days, this ‘sconto should then be half of one day’s rental. Wrong. In RiR math, the discount came out to be slightly less than 3%. Try as I might I could not figure out what they were basing the discount on. It wasn't the days over a week or any other combination of days and percent that I could figure.

Then I checked some other sites offering short term rentals in Roma and discovered that while they were pricier, their ‘sconto was a straight 10 percent on rentals of more than a full week. Plus, RiR’s properties required a cash deposit of up to €300 that was returned (or not) at checkout. Not a hold on a credit card, but cash. In Euros. I don’t know about you, but having close to $500 in holiday money tied up in a deposit is no fun. Then there’s the matter of having a whopping sum in foreign currency that has to be spent or changed in a short period between the time you check out and the time your plane leaves, plus the lack of leverage you have in getting the deposit back if there’s a disputa because you HAVE to be at the airport. Well, along with the rather questionable math skill set evidenced by the incorrect discounts, I concluded that RiR was o-u-t.

So I went back to the books and bought a later guidebook to convent and monastery hospitality in Europe a pair of books called "Good Night and God Bless". And bingo, I started seeing a few places that combined reasonable location with reasonable price. One thing about the convent hotels - cleanliness and safety just are not issues. So I started to work on letters of inquiry that I could fax via Internet or email.

Looking for Lodgings, part 1

Sadly, especially since the Jubilee in 2000, the city’s convent hostels and hotels have truly discovered the tourist dollar and euro. Convents that in my pre-1999 guidebook were listed as 45-50,000 lira (about $30-40) are 70€ now – which is just under $100 US and that was for a single. Settling for a bathroom down the hall got it down to perhaps $80 US, but that still made my heart lurch in despair as I thought about the 10 days I hoped to stay.
There was no point in going if my lodging cost so much that I could not afford museum admission fees, etc. And the cheaper convent hotels all seemed to be on the far side of Vatican City or otherwise not centrally located, which would add train and bus time to all excursions to the Centro Storico – or historical center. i.e. where all the ruins and museums and classical churches and other points of interest are clustered.
So I started looking for alternatives. First I looked online for pensiones, the European version of a bed & breakfast, only to discover that most of what was billed as a pensione was a cheap hotel offering a continental breakfast, many with really awful online reviews. I’m really not too fussy, but I do need a reasonably comfortable bed (yes, it’s true, at home I sleep on a heated waterbed with a featherbed on top. Do not call me Princess. In the spirit of this blog, call me Principessa!) and a clean bathroom, preferably my own. Thank you.
Needless to say, at 50+, the idea of a youth hostel was right off the list from the beginning.
However, finding a single room inside my budget - which I'd hoped to keep under $75 US a day - was not looking like a hot prospect. I had a short list of possibilities, but reading online reviews, even with a grain of salt, showed that the pickings were likely to be far less than ideal in either price, location or cleanliness. Frankly, I couldn't really understand the people who carped about decor - I wasn't under the impression that anyone would go to Rome for the purpose of sitting in a hotel room and admiring the decor, Heck, I don't even care if the sheets match, as long as they are clean.

Papers, please

Along with looking for a place to stay, I realized I needed my passport renewed. Checking online I discovered that I would have to go through the full application because old passport was more than 5 years expired. Drat. In addition to costing $135, the process of completing the form necessitated contacting the ex-Mr. Packrat because I had to supply his birth date as well as the dates of marriage and divorce. No such requirement last time. It rather did boil me a bit that I had to go through all of this when I have had a passport for a good part of my life.
Once I had assembled all the facts and printed out the forms – well, then the fun began. I went and got the requisite unflattering passport pictures and then went to the PO nearest my office to hand them in, only to discover that the Department of State’s website had neglected to inform me that I needed to make an appointment to hand in my passport forms (with $110 fee to the Department of State - and pay the Post Office $25 for their “efforts” in accepting my application). The ever helpful (cough, cough) flunkies at the Post Office provided me with a phone number to call. I called that number 72 times over the next calendar week before – on the 7th business day of trying  – I finally got a person on the phone. Who made an appointment for me for 12 days later. No need to worry about the government ever issuing internal passports, folks, they can’t even handle the passport applications of the traveling public in the off season.
So after about an hour of finding and filling out the form, then a lunch hour spent getting photographed, followed by the excursion to the post office and about 30 - 40 minutes of dialing time over the next week, I finally had an appointment.
On the appointed day, I arranged for a long lunch hour and went to turn in my application. I arrived at the PO about 5 minutes early and was shown into a tiny, cluttered, frigidly cold room off the postal lobby. Twenty minutes later I was still sitting there alone, after multiple reassurances that the passport clerk was on the phone with a customer. It seems to me that the customer who made an appointment and is physically sitting in your offices and is paying directly for your services should take precedence over the telephone customer, but apparently not.

Finally, a postal employee lurched breathless into the room and nearly took my breath away. Apparently Mr. Postal Clerk dunks himself in a vat of pungent cologne every morning. Within a minute I was coughing and tearing up. When he inquired as to the problem and I confessed to a perfume allergy he said – and I quote – “I’ve had some other folks tell me that they were allergic to my cologne.” Followed by a chuckle. Of course, what I wanted to say was “Oh, so it amuses you to make other people sick? So you work in a customer service position and put on cologne that you know adversely affects the health and comfort of others and that’s amusing?” But I didn’t. I was too busy mopping my streaming eyes.
After examining and photocopying and clipping and unclipping and having me write the aforementioned check, I was released from the tiny cubicle of respiratory torture into the lobby, where I watched Postal Minion #2 disassemble all the careful clipping and attaching only to reassemble the package in a different order and staple the pictures in different places. Then I paid the $25 fee to the Post Office and escaped, having been told to expect my passport in 4 to 6 weeks. Note that in acknowledgement of past delays and knowledge of government efficiency, I have allowed more than 3 times the maximum stated interval before the planned date of the trip.
Now, I have no plans whatsoever to drive in Italy, but prudence warring on the side of caution, the next step is to get my international drivers license. This, fortunately, can be obtained much more cheaply and through the offices of the AAA but also requires two more passport type photos. I wish I had checked first to avoid a second trip to the passport picture place. I truly expect that along with the lower price, it will be a significantly less stressful and time-consuming exercise. We shall see.

A plan starts to take shape

I’m a tad obsessive, I admit it. At least about things that matter to me. And I am finally going to take the trip to Rome that I have been thinking about for years and years and years.
I was about two-thirds of the way through planning a trip in 2003 when the bottom dropped out – the company I worked for got sold to another company who promptly turfed out about 30% of the staff – which percentage included me. The next 18 months of my life saw me spend almost every penny of my savings while contracting until I found a new employment home on November of 2004. It took most of the next 6 years to get my finances back in order – my only vacations during this time have been trips to family and one three-day excursion to take a class in New York. That trip saw the demise of my only good suitcase – the handle came off halfway up a flight of stairs out of the subway in Queens. Nightmare. And I felt very sad about not “going places”.
But then the end of 2010 came around and I noticed with surprise that my poor tattered savings account had actually managed to end the year with a net gain and I went “Aha” and said to myself “Let’s see how much we can save by June.”
The upshot is that with diligent pennywatching and despite an Easter Sunday trip to the ER with a horribly gashed hand, June ended with enough to cover airfare and lodgings and a light went on in my heart.
Knowing that I a> could not afford the high season in Rome and b> did not want to cope with crowds and heat anyway – it’s truly not sour grapes, I do not love the heat, I decided to aim for late winter.
So, Rome being Rome, I knew that the most expensive part of the trip could well be accommodations so I started my research.