Tag: Rome

Sunday Night is for Soccer!

One of my goals for living in Italy was to make it to at least one football game. This goal isn’t particularly difficult as Rome has two teams – Roma and Lazio – and there are loads of lower level games happening all over the place. All that said, after almost two years, we hadn’t made any move to actually make it happen.

Thankfully I work with some much more organized people and a Sunday night boys night was planned to watch Roma take on Fiorentia.

The main sport I follow is basketball as a long time committed fan of the Toronto Raptors. It’s news to absolutely no one that Europeans, and Italians in particular, take their football more seriously than most people can ever even conceive of. The atmosphere in the massive Olimpico Stadium was absolutely electric before kickoff.

To say I’ve never experienced such a thing is an understatement. The commitment, the passion, the vibes, absolutely legendary. The skill of the players on the field was astonishing too. Their speed, explosiveness, precision and creativity with the ball reflected the world class quality of the Serie A immediately.

The game passed by quite a bit faster than a football match does on tv. Always actions, always movement, no stoppages per half. The boys chuckled, bantered, threw back a few brewskis and peppered the one guy who actually followed Italian football with plenty of questions.

The squad come out with a 2-0 win on two beautiful strikes by their star player Paolo Dybala. We wound our way out along with the delighted crowd and realized that adult life almost never includes seeing 11pm on a Sunday night, but for this experience, it was worth it.

I’m hoping to get to see at least one more game before we leave Italy and maybe see if Aleksander wants to taking his kicking skills into the big leagues!

All Travellers’ Roads Really Do Lead To Rome

After a relatively quiet first year in Rome, in terms of guests and visitors, this past year has been almost the exact inverse. It seems that as covid travel restrictions and more general travel-related anxieties have subsided, people have turned their sights to Italy in an unbelievable way.

Whereas we hosted a few family visitors in 2021, in 2022, there seemed to be multiple friends, pals, acquaintances in Rome at any given time. Throughout the summer, it was not unusual to see 2-3 people I knew post Rome pics on Facebook – at some points becoming almost impossible to keep up with. From July until the end of the year, we had a grand total of THREE weekends without visitors!

Hard to believe and not always easy to manage, but also a real blessing to see so many people, to share some of our favourite places, restaurants, activities, towns and meals, and always enjoy experiencing this beautiful place through the eyes of our guests.

Here’s just a few quick hi-lights to the year of Italy, friendship and the rediscovery of the joy of travel!

The year starts with grandma in town after a family Christmas visit
Grandpa Joseph makes his first stop in the Eternal City!
In a preview of what’s to come, Dalia’s old friends Kadi and JP pass through for a couple days
A completely serendipitous meeting with old pal Eric in the hour before we boarded our ferry to Ischia
Cousin Jacek finally pulls the trigger and comes to Italy
Our first family friend guests – Joe, Christina and Aleksander’s newest best buddy Andreas
New pals!
Dalia’s mom arrives to save the month of August!
Uncle Zaya drops by for gelato, soccer practice and some listening sessions
Farzane, Nomce, pasta and babies!
Discussing dad tips, inflation and ancient Roman architecture with awesome human Nomce
Uncle Robert and family back for birthday visit #2
Anita makes a return visit to her beloved Italy and drops in on a few of the country’s finest public pianos
Old co-worker Loic, hubby and pal passing through on a long route to Vietnam!
Dalia gets to reconnect with old friend Asma
Aunty Lydia pulls off a quick weekend stop
Cool Chris White shows us around our own town
Mom pops back in and brings everyone’s favourite aunt Terenia
Michael D passes by and drops off a Radiohead record (forever welcome!)
Big A swings through for work and sneaks in a weekend trip to Tivoli
The year ends where it started, with uncle Pauly and babcia back in town! And Aleksander saying their names

One of the reasons I was always interested in living overseas is to be able to share part of the experience with friends and family. In Rome, we’re lucky enough to have a guest room available and couldn’t be happier to share it as a landing spot for our loved ones near and far.

We may have to develop a slightly more judicious guest hosting strategy in 2023 but for all the joint memories made this year, we’re forever grateful!

Babcia and Uncle Pauly come back for Roman Christmas #2

Earlier in the year, when I suggested to my brother that we may come back to Canada for Christmas, he said: Do what you gotta do bro, but I wouldn’t be mad about coming back to Rome for another Christmas!

Rome is not a hard sell at any time of year but during Christmas it really sparkles. We welcomed my mom and brother for their second Christmas here and my mom’s third visit since our arrival.

After a day or two shedding as much jet lag as possible, we visited the temporary Christmas World mini-theme park in Villa Borghese, walked to the Christmas market at Piazza Navona and generally hung out with a sick Aleksander and played with all the toys.

My mom thankfully brought all the ingredients and know-how required to pull off another Polish Christmas meal, despite the challenges here in Italy. Aleksander welcomed his gift haul of sports gear and cars from Santa and, overall, everyone had enough time decompressing from all the concerns of the rest of the year.

Christmas Day was a real beauty and we spent some time at the playground at nearby Villa Ada and although we didn’t quite make it to the Vatican as we did last year, we shared a peaceful and wonderful family oriented afternoon and evening.

Having finally recovered from Aleksander’s week-long fever, we headed to Milan on Boxing Day for a short stay. Returning from Milan, with only two nights left in mom and Paul’s visit, we relaxed and squeezed in one more Christmas lights display at Rome’s Orto Botanico.

Closing this year off with family nearby was a real blessing. We’re always grateful to live in Rome, but maybe never more than when we’re able to share our life here with our closest friends and family. Aleksander is finally at an age where he can interact independently, form his own little relationships and make memories with the people he’s around. It was heartwarming to see nonna and zio learning about Aleksander’s tender, warm and engaging personality.

It’s always hard to say goodbye but this time it was particularly tough knowing that the next visit won’t be for a few months at the earliest. It’s one of the big trade offs of living overseas, the distance from loved ones.

The New Year is just around the corner and for us, big pending news about where our next posting will be post-summer 2023. It’s not something we’ve dwelled on particularly much but a reality that we’ll see be facing down. Upwards and onwards either way!

Daddy’s Birthday in Assisi

Last year, boy’s birthday week took place in Dubai, this year we decided on a more modest itinerary and for my birthday took our first family weekend trip in months, to the wonderful, charming town of Assisi, historical home to Italy’s patron saint and favourite saintly animal lover, St. Francis.

Our first stop, predictably, was the Basilica of St. Francis where his tomb is found and where pilgrims from around the world come to pray, admire and absorb.

The day and weekend were supposed to be rainy and overcast but we hoped for some respite as we strolled through the narrow, sloped streets of the (surprise, surprise) hilltop town.

From the Basilica, we temporarily hid from the clouds in a cozy local restaurant, enjoyed a half litre of wine while Aleksander snoozed and the staff seemed to have forgotten about our order. We emerged to better weather and more and more fantastic views and piazzas to witness.

We walked the 800 metres or so down from the old town to our hillside hotel and comfortably checked-in. Our modest room had a big patio outside and plenty of intrigue and adventure for Aleksander.

We dined in, daddy snuck in a quick spa visit and we chatted and chatted about the summer, about the fall, about the future. The next day’s weather was cool but without almost any clouds to be seen.

We headed back up the hill to the old town and largely revisited the previous day’s sites with better lighting! The Sunday vibes in town were noticeably busier than Saturday, particularly in the Basilica, where the crowds made us grateful for our relatively quiet visit the day before.

Aleksander enjoyed some park time, we had coffee and cake, and wondered why it had taken us so long to get to Assisi, and also remembered the joy and importance of spending time together as a trio. We’ve had so many visitors this summer and it offers us so much but there’s nothing quite like spending time with the inner family circle, especially in sublimely beautiful places like Assisi.

We left for our train ride to Rome and promised eachother to always carve out some weekend travel exclusively for ourselves. And so, more Italian vacation planning to come! What a blessed and beautiful weekend in Assisi – the kind of aging I don’t even mind.

Aleksander’s First Halloween

Dalia and I both approach Halloween with a lukewarm enthusiasm. Neither of us has ever had a long storied tradition with the holiday and would, just as often, see it come and go without too much fuss. Being parents though, we’re realizing that we may need to step up our game for the sake of our kids.

We didn’t manage to think enough ahead to get Aleksander a costume online as the pickings are quite slim in Italy. But, as luck would have it, one of our visitors bought him a Juventus football uniform and there could be no more apt costume for our ball-obsessed toddler than this.

He owned his costume, along with ever present ball, and even though didn’t quite understand what was happening around him, did seem to appreciate the fun and energy of this novel celebration. Hopefully he just stays obsessed with sports forever and mommy and daddy can put him in different uniforms for years to come.