I took a biennial trip to Italy in July 2002. I mainly stayed in the house my family owns in Umbertide, in Umbria. We were a full group there; I was with my parents, my sister Flora, her friend Brian, and my parents’ friend Irene. There was a mix of relaxation, maintenance of the house, socializing with old friends (whether permanent or summer residents), and sightseeing. My father doesn’t go to Italy often; even as our ages advance, I count on him to take care of day-to-day planning when we’re there.

One area of advanced planning that I did was to arrange a car. Since the others were returning from Geneva, what worked best was a short-term lease of a Peugeot through Auto Europe. I arranged a Peugeot 406 to be sure of a car that could seat five adults comfortably with luggage, but then we wound up being six. So on our outings either someone stayed home or we arranged a joint outing with someone with a car. This included the initial drive from Rome airport to Umbertide. The others stayed in Rome for a few days before my arrival; a friend came and got Flora, Brian, and Irene; my parents met me at the airport and picked up the car arranged for that time. (When everyone else went from Umbertide to Switzerland, there were finally five people with luggage.) When we picked the car up at the airport, the fuel level was low, so we stopped early to fill it up. We drove just a little farther, and the low fuel warning light came on. Had the gas station charged us for fuel and not provided it? Some stations on the highway are known to try to sell air filters and wiper blades to people who don’t need them, but a scam this extreme? We were preparing widespread denunciations as we pulled into the next station. My father stopped the car, started it again to bring it into better position to be fueled, and the needle shot up to Full. Evidently all that had happened had been some fluke in the fuel display.

When we arrived in Umbertide, we learned that our house had been burglarized two nights earlier. The cleaning lady had spent a full day cleaning after some friends’ stay, then returned the next day to make a final set-up for us, and discovered the theft and disgusting vandalism. They took a cell phone, stereo, dishes, and silverware, some of which belonged to other part-time residents of the house; it was a bad feeling, but the cleaning lady got the place in good shape for us. We replaced the cell phone and, for the first time in 23 years, I was able to receive phone calls in Italy, making it easier to arrange things.

Before the trip, I had arranged a get-together with Travelzine member Kristy from the San Francisco area. It was a pleasant lunch in Arezzo with her and her 4.5-year-old son (her husband was under the weather). In Arezzo we also saw the Piero della Francesca frescoes open following a long restoration. On the trip we ate at some long-time favorite restaurants and found them still excellent: Il Molino in Spello and Taverna del Lupo in Gubbio. We were pleased to find that there is now an elevator to Piazza Grande in Gubbio, cutting the intense climb that could be hard on some in our group (I found the elevator five minutes before it closed). One nice restaurant new to us was the Castello di Sorci outside Anghiari, where we were brought the many courses that were made for the day, without our needing to choose.

One change I knew to be prepared for was the implementation of the euro. It was impressive that so many countries had changed from their diverse currencies to this new one in a short time. It had been upsetting to look at lira prices, remembering that a soft drink that cost 50 lire in my adolescence had reached 3000, even if the change wasn’t so extreme when converted to dollar values of the time. Now there was a clean slate and easy conversion with the euro roughly equal to the U.S. dollar. Italians were used to euros (although there were too many coin denominations) for their everyday expenses; sometimes bigger costs were first quoted in thousands of lire, bringing relief when the amount was halved into euros. For the sake of those who couldn’t grasp such things as national budget figures in euros, the media converted big amounts into “old lire.”

I noticed the most changes when I was in Rome for the final day before my return. I hadn’t been there for four years, and I saw many things that had come into place for the 2000 Jubilee; I know that many readers have already seen these things. I took the bus from Umbertide to the area across from Stazione Tiburtina, where they now have more of a true bus station with a covered walkway to the train station. I took the commuter train to Ostiense; these are impressive new double-decker trains. There was a new generation of city buses, also modern streetcars in place of the antique stock I remembered. I was slightly saddened to see signage also in English on the buses, feeling that it was a strike against Italian linguistic pride, but that is the direction in which society is going. Having lived in Rome for my last two years of high school in the 1970s, I’m used to taking public transport. I couldn’t claim to be current on the bus lines, but I looked up the routes I expected to take on the city transit system route planner. As could happen anywhere, the efficiency I had hoped for did not always come through. I waited quite a long time for a bus that was supposed to run every seven minutes but didn’t come as other lines passed repeatedly. I knew that when it finally came it would be packed, so I went an alternate way by taking the metro and walking. It’s nice to walk the streets of old Rome, but precious time from my one day was wasted with this bus wait.

The main sights I saw were the branch of the Museo Nazionale Romano of antiquities at Palazzo Altemps, near Piazza Navona; San Clemente, a church on three levels from three different eras of early Christianity; and the recently reopened Domus Aurea, Nero’s underground mansion near the Colosseum. There were many police around the houses of parliament, and a couple of officers at the major tourist locations; I don’t know if the intent of the latter was to prevent petty crime or terrorism, but I didn’t see the harassing beggars that are sometimes common.

I’ve been in the habit of booking hotels near Stazione Ostiense, where one can easily catch the train to the airport; this time I stayed at the Hotel Pyramid. They had a room ready for me when I arrived at 9, but it was up four flights of stairs. I needed to put the card that came with the room key into a slot to turn the lights on, and call the front desk to turn the air conditioning on (although I’m used to not having A/C in Rome). The walk to/from the station meant crossing busy streets; at least they had stoplights, but it was a long wait for them to change. I might rethink staying in the area in the future. I had my last dinner at Lo Scopettaro, on Lungotevere Testaccio, where they suggested a sampling of Roman specialties and I had a good final meal.

There were big changes at Rome airport since I last passed through there. My inbound flight arrived at the new midfield terminal connected by train to the main terminal. The flight arrived early (7.15 vs. 7.50 a.m.) and there were long lines at passport control. As I usually seem to do, I picked the slowest line available to non-EU citizens. In these lines, Americans are generally quickly sent through, but the line gets held up when there are people of nationalities that the authorities put through greater scrutiny. Eventually it becomes clear that Americans can move to the EU line or the line that has come open although the sign still says “Closed.” Getting to my return flight was the most stressful: I got to the airport 2.5 hours early and barely made my flight. The check-in area for U.S. carriers was roped off, with a giant policeman asking to see (e-)ticket and passport (which I had to retrieve from a pouch under my clothes); there were sharpshooters on the balcony. Check-in in Rome, with a few designated counter positions for each flight, had always moved pretty quickly in my memory; this time I located the end of a line slightly longer than usual, only to be told that this was a gap to let people through--the line was “back there.” I went to that end; after the gap the line split into two, with an employee assuring us that was correct. My line then stood still for 45 minutes as the other moved. When someone asked about this, we were told that we were on the wrong side of a pillar; we needed to be on the other side with the mini-counters with agents asking security questions. We had been in view of the agents at the regular check-in counters who said nothing, and our line didn’t get priority after we moved.

When I was finally checked-in, I rushed to the long lines for security and exit passport control. That moved slowly; as I got close to the front, I saw that security was often sitting idle because the line for passport control reached back to the checkpoint. Rightly or wrongly, the U.S. doesn’t have passport control for people leaving the country, but these Italian agents were being very deliberate. An Italian passenger shouted across the barrier that this was “unworthy of a civilized country”: yes, they needed to do security, but they should wave people through passport control when the line is like this. When I finally got through (and security was nothing special), it was almost 11, when a sign posted at check-in said the gate would close. I rushed to the train to the remote terminal and boarded a few minutes after 11. Some people boarded the oversold flight after the 11.20 departure time, but it left just a few minutes late.

That’s the main thing to report about my flights. I booked my trip from Kansas City to Rome with a change in Chicago on American Airlines’ Web site. It was a Web-only fare that was better than anything I could find on my own on a consolidator site. Maybe something better could have turned up with human intervention, but it was appealing to go with one easy connection after I had problems going with multiple connections on previous trips. Also this qualified for frequent flyer credit including bonus miles for booking on their site. I had read last year that American hadn’t added extra leg room on their international flights. I thought I’d seen more recently that the whole fleet was converted, but that was not the case on this international flight. The length of the Chicago-Rome flight made it possible to get a bit more sleep than usual.

So, this was a great, revitalizing trip.