Originally Posted by
exilencfc
I think it probably depends a bit on where you're coming from. I didn't find Rome at all alarming but then I go to London fairly often and i'd previously been to New York and Budapest, both of which alarmed me more than Rome. I still don't think Rome is that bad though, it's nowhere near as 'foreign' feeling as Budapest and i'd say it's less confusing than London or Prague.
I have to agree. Going step by step from what some would consider easy cities is a personal choice. I was just speaking to a 25 year old woman going abroad for the first time to hike solo in Brazil, Chile, and Bolivia (I tried to talk her out of it), but she can handle herself, and is very comfortable with it. My daughter graduated from college and moved to Rome two months later, found an apartment, a job teaching english, became a teacher, and ultimately a travel agent there. Some people find foreign sights and sounds intimidating, others find it thrilling and exhilarating.
There are also different ways of visiting. You can go to Rome and be completely coddled with guides and car services and stay in high end hotels on Via Condotti or in Piazza Barberini, or you can do it yourself and experience more typical Roman neighborhoods.
Rome gets well over 6 million visitors, was the 14th most visited city in the world in 2014, and was ranked as the fourth most desirable place to visit, so not too many people seem to be intimidated by it. Milan actually gets slightly more visitors, but those are mostly people traveling there on business, not to enjoy Italy. In Milan, change the signs from Italian to English and in most neighborhoods you would think you were in a city in America. That's not the case in historical places like Rome, artistic gems like Florence, or in drop dead gorgeous cities like Venice.
It is easy to avoid the pickpocket boogeyman in Rome. Rome has one of the lowest crime rates out of any major city, especially compared to places like London or Glasgow, or compared to many USA and South American cities where they will just mug you and take your wallet, rather than pickpocket you. You are more likely to lose your wallet visiting Los Angeles or New Orleans than in Rome. They don't mug you in Italy, and if you don't want to be a pickpocketing victim, it's easy to make sure that doesn't happen.
Wear a money belt and leave everything else in the hotel safe except a copy of your passport or USA drivers license in the money belt, or buy one of those wallet things on a chain that go around your neck and under your shirt so that you will not get robbed unless they first steal your shirt, and they don't do that over there. I don't do either of these things when I'm over there, but I don't have a fat wallet sticking out of my back pocket, and my wife doesn't travel with a large purse that isn't securely fashioned. Only when I leave Italy and come back to the USA do I become aware of the possibility of getting robbed. It's not going to happen in Italy.
The stories of two guys on a Vespa zooming by, with the guy on the back seat carrying a scissors or a knife to cut your purse strap and zoom off with it are stories from the 1970's when Italy was a much different place, with terrorist bombs going off in the main train station in Bologna, the ex-prime minister getting kidnapped by the Red Brigade and found dead in a car trunk in the streets of Rome, and with many drug problems. Those days are long gone.
The last pickpocketing I saw in Rome was last Spring. In a train station an old Italian man started yelling in Italian that he was just pick-pocketed! I was on the escalator and turned around but before I could react the pickpocket ran by me. There were two men in their 40's or 50's on the escalator above me who turned around in time and they tackled him and held him until the police came and took him away in handcuffs. I also passed by an American man in distress on the main street going to Piazza del Popolo, talking into his cell phone lamenting to someone in the USA, "Susan just had her purse stolen. Yeah, she lost her passport." I lingered around to overhear what had happened. Susan had gone shopping in a department store, left her purse in the shopping cart, and went wandering off to look at things in other aisles. The same thing happened to my wife in a Safeway supermarket in New York City. There's nothing unique to what happens when you are careless in Rome.
In Rome almost everyone speaks some English (it's a required part of the school curriculum). The cabs from the airport are fixed price. Rome is in fact, travel 101 for major cities to visit, not just in Italy, but in Europe. It certainly has a lower crime rate than London, Barcelona, or Madrid. It can't get any easier. I personally don't consider Milan to be a major city to visit, and I think there's a general consensus on that, although I acknowledge that the World Expo might change that for six months or so in the reasonable opinion of some.
In Rome, the only problem is that they cater so much to tourists that sometimes you don't even know you left home. You can stay in an American hotel chain, and eat an American pasta dish like fettuccine alfredo.
There is a range of normal when it comes to fear about travel, and I wouldn't judge someone as being fearful for wanting to land in Naples and be taken by private car to a resort on the Amalfi Coast, nor would I consider it reckless to spend a few late nights hanging out around Spaccanapoli in the old part of Naples.
I agree with you, a lot depends on what you are used to, your personality, perhaps your age (I'm old enough to say that), and you have to make your own decision. I personally don't think it is at all necessary to dip your toe into Italy first by stopping in a bland city like Milan and wasting a day in order to ease yourself into a city as easy as Rome.