5 or my 15 Impressions from my
Solo Christmas trip to Rome: part of a guest post I did for BrowsingRome.com
Although I travel solo to Italy every year and try to stay
as long as possible I have never been Home To Italy during the winter. Usually by November I head back to the
southern part of the USA to wait out the ice and cold across the Northern
Hemisphere.
My December trip was devoted entirely to finding what xmas traditions Italians practice
that Italian Americans also observe.
Therefore my visit did not include museums this year or monuments but
rather the seasonal foods, street festivals and markets where Italians were
enjoying the holidays.
This theme proved to be perfect. It was easy to do a visual inspection of
holiday decorations as I progressed from Zurich to Como and down to Rome, but
also the tourists were minimal, locals were more available to chat and the
topic of Natale was universal to all.
Rome Solo"
1.
Street
lighting: In every town and city I visited the streets
were blazing with Christmas lights. No
plastic snowmen, candy canes or Rudolf but street after street had displays of
white lights. Each street was
different. Some designs, such as the
‘jellyfish look’ were very unique. I
could not find anyone to ask if each neighborhood decides what lights they used
nor do I think that question ever came up!
2. The
Christmas Markets
I left the USA with a list of markets that would be featured in each of
the towns I planned to visit.
Apparently an outside Christmas market can be found in most Italian
towns. In Florence it was a German
market, in Prato they had a Chocolate fair.
Rome has a huge market in Piazza
Narvone that goes on for weeks. I
visited several times to try to see everything.
In addition to the stands offering sweets and snacks the popular items
were something like an over sized donut and crepes filled with Nutella. I enjoyed watching children eating cotton
candy for the first time and learning how to eat it.
Since an outdoor market is a perfect location for a solo traveler to
spend time, observe, interact and not become the object of everyone’s attention
I found lots to keep me interested and except for the biting cold, would have
stayed longer.
The puppet stand had me transfixed. Who can you identify?
The puppet stand had me transfixed. Who can you identify?
There
were fortune tellers that offered services in several languages: when I returned to have my palm read later in
the week, they were nowhere to be found.
Perhaps you could only know your fortune on weekends.
Many
stands offered Christmas decorations. You
could find Befana dolls in all sizes.
My first time meeting Befana.
I am from New Jersey where towns along the beach area have a boardwalk
and amusement park with rides and games.
What a shock to find the SAME games in New Jersey arcades for perhaps
100 years, here at the Piazza Narvone market.
Do you think Italian Americans brought these games with them when they
immigrated?
3. A tree with letters to Babbo Natale: the Italian version of a letter to Santa. This tree was in the main train station in Rome
5.
Food, food,
food Cake, Cake, Cake
I did not even make a dent in all the wonderful treats available. The bakeries were so packed there was no way
for me to point and ask for ‘one of everything’ which is what I REALLY wanted
to do.
After
tasting fresh Panetone I began to think that what we have in the USA is last year’s
leftovers…. Olga Stinga at SASL told me
you receive gifts of Panetone at this time of year and often pass extra
Panetone on to someone else….….the
original re gifting.
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