Personally, I love traveling by foot whenever I can so I can experience as many parts of a city as possible, as closely as possible. And when I walk in Rome, I feel two things: wonder and paranoia.
I feel paranoia because the drivers in Rome are aggressive, and crossing the street in Italy’s capital is not for the faint of heart. When I’m walking in Seattle, cars see me standing at a crosswalk and stop to let me cross. In Rome, cars ignore the crosswalk entirely and zoom right on by. (Of course, they stop for stoplights, but not all crosswalks are at stoplights.) The only way to stop them is to take a deep breath, have some faith, and just start crossing the street, trusting them to stop! Fortunately, they always do, but there’s always a part of you wondering… what if they don’t this time?!
But walking in Rome is worth it for the wonder. Just tonight, as I was hurrying across the city to meet a friend, I walked right past the Pantheon. It’s arguably the best-preserved Roman building in the world and has been in continuous use since 126 AD – and I strolled casually past it like it was just another building in the neighborhood. Elsewhere in the city, you can follow in the literal footsteps of Caeser and Emperor Hadrian or walk the ancient Appian Way road that Romans would take from Rome to Naples.
The magnificent history certainly makes braving the intimidating traffic worth the uneasiness.
