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.
