Travelling Walsh's: The other Rome.

Ever wondered what is outside the central area of Rome? Is there anything past The Vatican, Colloseum, and Trevi Fountian? Today we wondered this question, and it was also one of the reasons why we chose to stay in Rome for 6 nights, to at least spend one day exploring the other Rome.

We thought one way to do this would be go to a shopping mall to see the real people going about their lives, without answering the needs of every day tourists. So we boarded the bus to Porta di Roma shopping centre. This is on the outskirts of the city just inside the ring road and is one of the few large centres. The bus ride was interesting. The ride took one hour, and wound its way from Trevi fountain area in a general north east direction.

Initially we passed areas similar to where we are staying but without the souvenir shops and constant gelato. Then it changed. There were more and more nine to twelve story condominiums and the conditions were not good. It appeared that at one time these large areas would have once been nice, but now it is not somewhere we would like to get off the bus. We don't know why the conditions were like they were, could it be government cutbacks, we didnt know.

The areas had more grafitti, long grass, and rubbish than was expected, with many of the childrens playgrounds being unsafe, dirty and a genreal appearance of being broken.

At the end of our hours bus ride and seeing this different side to Rome we were happy to dissembark and see a practically brand new shopping centre. With over 220 shops it was pretty big, but nowhere as big as some we have seen in Melbourne. There were many clothes, jewellery and perfume shops along with a share of food and a large cinema.

We wondered the two floors of shops for a few hours and saw what we wanted to see. Normal, non tourist effected Rome. There were no pushy men trying to sell counterfit bags or watches, the teenagers were being stupid just as they are in Australia and families were browsing and the parents telling the children no to everything they selected.

After our shopping fix, we returned to the main area but not without a detour to the Giardino Zoologico, or Zoo. Still on track with doing as the locals do, this place was not filled with Americans, Australians or any tourists for that matter. Well it may have had Italian tourists but they all looked local to me. Once again we saw the Roman way of life in fact there was one event I will mention Katie and I saw while we were taking a rest and cooling off with a gelato.

We saw two couples each with a three year old child. The mothers were walking with the children and the fathers pushing the empty prams. As they were walking along the children and women were distracted by an animal in its enclosure. Somehow at this point both of the men realised this distraction and they were no longer the main attraction in the womens eyes. With a blink we saw them both fast step along the path and as if synchronised divers parked the prams with a push against the wall. Both Katie and I were interested in what had grabbed there attention like a piece of iron to a magnet, so we hopped up and discreetly walked around the corner to see the Bar.

Bars are different in Italy, they sell many things from gelato to sandwiches along with soft and hard drinks. Within less than one minute the men were back outside both with a bottle of water, from our observations we can't be sure but we suspect they may have ducked in for a quick Grappa or two and were using the bottled water as a cover.

After this we had a look around the Zoo, here are the highlights.