When in Rome

Rome is apparently where all roads lead to. So when you do eventually get there, here are my top seven things best avoided:

1. African hawkers bearing strange gifts
These guys move table to table along the cafe-lined streets peddling such useless items as alabaster elephants and collapsible wooden bowls. More effective market research has been undertaken by the tanned street sellers around the Colosseum, who stand in the midday heat with an impressive tower of hats on their heads and a mountain of selfie sticks at their feet.

2. Albanians dressed as Centurions photo-bombing your snapshot to then hustle you for twenty Euros for the privilege
I am publicly shaming myself here with this awful snap as a reminder to never ever EVER be taken in by this scam again. If you see this man, run!

DodgyAlbanian Centurion

3. Imitation designer bags for sale
Personally, I have no problem with this. But the issue here isn’t the terrible injustice this fakery must be for the struggling fashion houses and their exorbitantly priced products made in the sweatshops of Bangladesh. The main issue here is the other scam I’m going to face when the lovely Irish budget airline I am travelling home with decides to try and slap on an excess fee and check my new additional 'designer' bag in the hold.

4. Skip the line
Standing in the stretching queues wrapped miles around the Vatican and Colosseum you will be tantalised to ‘skip the line’ for the small fee of just x hundred euros. Discussions with these touts that Britain is still just about in Europe and therefore we ‘jump the queue’, not ‘skip the line’, have so far proved fruitless. I am hopeful that this blog will inspire fellow British-English zealots to rise up and take this fight on too.

5. Fake Irish Bars
We went budget and stayed in Flann O’Brien's Irish Bar: in a room, not under the table, you understand. Hilarious late night entertainment was had listening to Italian wannabe-Irish musicians. Slaughterings of the Fields of Athenry will stay with me long after memories of the Pantheon have faded.

6. The Trevi Fountain
One of the most iconic places in the World. 3,000 Euros a day is thrown into its aquamarine waters by the thousands of selfie-taking visitors sardined daily into this little square. My top tip is a 3am moonlit paddle, surrounded only by water, wonder and silence.
PS It’s an offence to take money out of the fountain. Not sure about paddling.