{"id":1833,"date":"2018-06-04T10:00:31","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T14:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ustoa.com\/blog\/?p=1833"},"modified":"2024-02-22T11:14:17","modified_gmt":"2024-02-22T16:14:17","slug":"how-i-learned-to-live-like-a-roman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustoa.com\/blog\/how-i-learned-to-live-like-a-roman\/","title":{"rendered":"How I Learned to Live Like a Roman"},"content":{"rendered":"

By AFAR Ambassador Tanveer Badal <\/em><\/p>\n

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As a travel photographer, I\u2019ve had the privilege of visiting over 50 countries. And as I\u2019ve become a more experienced traveler, I\u2019ve found myself no longer interested in just crossing places off a bucket list or filling my passport with as many stamps as possible. Instead, I\u2019m more interested in getting to know my favorite places more intimately. For example, I\u2019ve been to India multiple times and would go back in a heartbeat. A few months ago, I re-visited Morocco<\/a> on another Afar + USTOA assignment, and recently, I had a chance to return to Italy for the third time.<\/p>\n

On previous trips, I\u2019d only spent a couple of days in Rome before moving on to other parts of the country such as the Amalfi Coast or Venice. I\u2019d breezed through the must-see sights such as Vatican City and the Colosseum. So this time, I wanted to do Rome differently and really try to dig a little deeper into this beautiful city. I joined Perillo\u2019s Learning Journeys<\/a>, and the company created a custom itinerary for me to actually \u201clive like a Roman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through Learning Journeys, I signed up for week-long Italian language lessons at Scuola Leonardo da Vinci. Later, I discovered this was the same school that Elizabeth Gilbert, the author of Eat, Pray, Love,<\/i> had attended and wrote about in her well-known memoir. After experiencing the school myself, I understood why. Each morning, I would stand shoulder to shoulder with other Romans and order my cappuccino<\/i> and cornetto<\/i> from a cafe and then walk into class in an actual Italian palazzo<\/i> (i.e., a palace). How cool is that? My class of a dozen included a range of foreigners, from a 19-year-old Thai student to a 70-year old retired Australian man. And within this spectacular setting, our teacher, Marta, seemed straight out of a classic Italian movie–she was intelligent, beautiful and charming.<\/p>\n

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Scuola Leonardo da Vinci<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

And actually I did<\/i> visit the Vatican Museum and the Colosseum again. But this time, Perillo’s Learning Journeys<\/a> set me up with guides that could have been art history professors at Ivy League colleges. I felt like I experienced these sights for the very first time, and in my mind I could envision ancient Romans living in the city as the stories and paintings were explained. I learned, for example, where Michelangelo had painted a self-portrait in the Sistine Chapel (as St. Bartholomew, a saint who\u2019s identified as being skinned alive) and that Julius Caesar once walked across the same Ponte Cestio bridge that I nonchalantly crossed into the Trastevere neighborhood. I have a whole new appreciation for \u201ctour guides\u201d after this trip. The word \u201cguide\u201d barely does their job justice. They\u2019re more like historical storytellers.<\/p>\n

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Another reason I wanted to live like a Roman was simply to take better photographs. People love to say \u201cyou can\u2019t take a bad photograph in Rome.\u201d But what they really mean is you can\u2019t take a bad postcard photo. That\u2019s not something I was interested in — taking the same beautiful photo that everyone else has taken a million times over. In fact, taking a good, original photo in any famous city is incredibly difficult. Instead, I wanted to capture a slice-of-life scene of Rome, moments that would invoke a sense of mood or texture and take me right back to the city. You can\u2019t do that if you\u2019re just in Rome for 24 hours following the well-beaten tourist trail.<\/p>\n

Each day after my Italian class was over, I\u2019d go on long walks with my camera in hand, and try to capture Romans going about their daily lives — reading a newspaper in a sunny square, walking their dog, drinking espresso… Through these walks, I discovered that my favorite part of Rome is the Trastevere neighborhood, a place I\u2019d only casually visited during my previous trips.<\/p>\n

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\"rome-tanveer-badal-13\"<\/a><\/p>\n

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Ultimately, I found myself not even needing to look at my Google Maps app to find my way around. Instead, I would look for \u201cthat Osteria\u201d where I needed to take a left, which would then take me to Piazza Navona; or I realized that if I followed Via di Torre Argentina, a street lined with Italian leather goods shops, it would ultimately lead me to the Pantheon.<\/p>\n

What I\u2019m mostly excited about after my Roman experience with Perillo’s Learning Journeys is that the next time I come back to Rome (and I certainly hope I do) I\u2019ll have all these lessons and experiences under my belt, and will feel at least a little bit more like a local. I\u2019ll know how to get from the airport to the city center and then how to find that amazing restaurant near the Trevi Fountain where I had the best cacio e pepe <\/i>of my life. I\u2019ll know how to make my way between Trastevere and Rome\u2019s historical center without consulting a map constantly. That, to me, makes travel so much more rewarding that crossing another place off the bucket list.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Interested in learning more about Tanveer’s journey?<\/i>\u00a0Read more about it on\u00a0AFAR.com<\/a>, the USTOA Blog<\/a>,\u00a0and c<\/i><\/i>heck out\u00a0<\/i>Perillo’s Learning Journey\u00a0Live Like A Roman<\/a> itinerary.<\/i><\/p>\n

Tanveer is a travel, hotel, and lifestyle photographer who has explored more than 50 countries. Some trips have led him to photograph luxury hotels on the Amalfi Coast or the Riviera Maya, while others have taken him on long treks in the Bhutanese Himalayas or in search of lemurs in Madagascar. Follow his ongoing travels on <\/i>Instagram<\/i><\/a> or check out his <\/i>travel portfolio<\/a>.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By AFAR Ambassador Tanveer Badal As a travel photographer, I\u2019ve had the privilege of visiting over 50 countries. And as I\u2019ve become a more experienced traveler, I\u2019ve found myself no longer interested in just crossing places off a bucket list or filling my passport with as many stamps as possible. Instead, I\u2019m more interested in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1844,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[8],"class_list":["post-1833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-rome","tag-live-like-a-local"],"yoast_head":"\nHow I Learned to Live Like A Roman - USTOA Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Join AFAR Ambassador Tanveer Badal as he discovers Rome like a local on USTOA tour operator member Perillo's Learning Journey new "Live like a Roman" tour.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/ustoa.com\/blog\/how-i-learned-to-live-like-a-roman\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How I Learned to Live Like A Roman - 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