The flat in Rome, despite all the graffiti, cyclone fences and homeless people we’d walked past, was relatively new and decked out with trendy Ikea furniture.

It was on the third floor of a security block. I’d noted on the way in the door into the security block had an effective lock. The flat itself had roll down security shutters, not only to keep out people who were good at scaling three floors of sheer wall, but they also blocked the sun completely. I mean totally black rooms so, unless you had a watch or clock handy that glowed in the dark there was no chance of knowing the time.

That first night I organised beds while Pete went downstairs to a pizza ristorante that Costanza had recommended. Kai and Poppy were going to have to sleep in a pull out sofa in the small living/dining area, Jack and Noah had their own room but had to share a double bed.

Pete came back twenty minutes later with three pizza boxes. You could smell the garlic and hot cheese.

‘How’d you go?’ I asked, clearing the table that was already cluttered with drawing paper, pencils and Kai and Poppy’s soft toys. ‘Did the guy speak English?’

‘Yeah.’ Pete said. ‘I said Bonjourno and he looked at me as if I was stupid and said, “Don’t you speak English?” Uh yeah, can I get some pizza?’

I laughed, ‘So you didn’t have any trouble ordering?’

‘He could speak English but not well enough to understand what we wanted on a pizza. He’s never heard of ham. We got something that looks like smoked salmon but I think it’s closer to prosciutto than salmon and there’s a vege one for you. Should be OK.’

Our first Italian pizza wasn’t a let down. Thin crusts covered in fine layers of tomato and mozzarella and then topped with sliced food that we all took in turns to guess what it was.

Once the pizza was done everyone was straight to bed. I didn’t even have to ask the kids to go, they just got up from the table and said goodnight, their eyes were almost closed before they’d finished brushing their teeth. Pete and I tried to stay up a bit longer in the hope of getting our jet-lagged bodies in line with Rome time, but we only lasted half an hour before we gave in and went to bed ourselves.

At three in the morning my eyes opened. It was so dark that I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face thanks to the super shutters. I wasn’t half awake but wide-awake, time to get up kind of awake. Then I heard the whispers from the lounge/dining room where Poppy and Kai were sleeping. One, two, three and yep four voices, all of them awake, great. I shut my eyes and told my body that yes, it was true, it really was the middle of the night, it was time to sleep. Pete rolled over next to me and then rolled back, obviously awake or about to be. I slowed my breath down, made it sound like I was asleep. The voices in the lounge room were getting louder, one of us was going to have to go out there. If I was clever it wasn’t going to be me.

Pete gave in quicker than I thought he would. After only a few minutes he sat up and started pulling on some clothes.

I mumbled in a sleepy sounding voice, ‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s all right, go back to sleep. The kids are awake I’m going to go out and sit with them for a while before I make them go back to bed.’

‘Mmmm,’ I said sounding like I was drifting back off to sleep, thinking ‘good-o.’

With the thick door between me and where the kids were, and Pete now out there controlling the volume I couldn’t hear anything except for the sirens that raced past every fifteen minutes or so on the street below. I lay there for about an hour thinking any minute now I’ll go back to sleep, but my body wasn’t having any of it. Finally after turning this way and that, and realising lying on my belly wasn’t going to get me off to sleep like it usually did, I turned the light on. Four-o-clock. I thought about going out and rescuing Pete but couldn’t come at the idea of having to keep the kids happy in such a small area at such a ridiculous time of the morning, so I picked up my book instead.

When Pete came in an hour later I was still reading.

‘Oh, awake are we?’

‘Couldn’t sleep,’ I smiled up at him sweetly. ‘How’d you go with that lot out there?’

Pete pulled off his clothes and hopped into bed next to me.

‘Yep they’ve all had their midnight snack, twenty games of UNO and are now back in bed with lights out. They’re under the threat of having to go and sleep with the homeless man in his cage if they utter one word before I come out and tell them it’s time to get up.’

I put down my book and turned out the bedside light thinking there was no hope of sleep. But I must have crashed, because two hours later I was woken by the loud words, ‘I’m telling on you.’ Pete groaned and rolled over next to me. Only fair that I got up this time.

None of the kids had been back to sleep and there were pillows strewn everywhere, no doubt from fights I hadn’t heard. There were cubby houses made out of blankets and sheets, and pizza boxes, now with only three bits of pizza left, open and left lying on the floor. The tidy flat we’d walked into the night before was nowhere to be seen.

After a breakfast of pizza and biscuits, a quick clean up of the flat and an argument with Kai over how many layers of clothing he needed to wear, (it wasn’t cold enough for jackets but definitely cold enough for singlets and jumpers), we were ready to leave the flat. Pete had his man bag with camera inside and I had a red backpack with water and the lollies and biscuits Costanza had given us.

Out on the street the kids acted as if they’d been locked up for three days, which I guess in a way they had. Noah and Jack were doing imaginary ‘ollies’ (yeah I’m not sure what they are either, some sort of skateboard jumping thing) off anything knee high and above,. Kai was trying to keep up, bouncing along behind them, and Poppy, who had managed to get one wheel to stay out of her rollie shoes, had attached herself to one of my hands and was being pulled along like a luggage bag with wheels.

The road in front of the unit was nose to tail with traffic. Horns were beeping and cars were regularly mounting the wide medium strip in the middle to turn around and go the other way. The thing that really worried me though was the mopeds. At forty, fifty kilometres an hour they were mounting the footpath and zooming along dodging Pete, me and the kids before bumping back down the gutter on to the road.

‘Come here, everyone come here,’ I called to the kids. ‘Stay to the side so people can get past,’ meaning mopeds and the occasional pedestrian.

‘Can we go up on the steps and ollie?’ Jack asked.

I looked over at the long steps we were walking past and wondered if mopeds could mount them, but decided they couldn’t. ‘Yeah OK, but look out for the mopeds.’ I had the feeling that one dead or injured kid wasn’t going to upset these drivers too much.

We got to the traffic lights at the end of the street that were causing the queue. From where we stood waiting to cross the road we looked straight at the ancient wall of Rome, the one that used to surround the city. Huge arches made out of stones, thousands and thousands of years old.

‘Hey look guys, look at the wall, it’s the wall that used to go round Rome to protect it.’ Jack was interested but Noah and Kai were still trying to find things to jump off and Poppy was more concerned about balancing on her wheels.

We stopped at the lights waiting for the green pedestrian light to come on. The cars were stopped too, a red light their way as well as ours. A few of the pedestrians who had been walking with us walked straight across, but I wasn’t venturing out with four kids in tow until a light told me I could, particularly after the mopeds zooming along the footpath with us.

Standing there waiting for the lights to change I had the feeling I was being watched. I looked over at the closest car, the man sitting behind the wheel was staring, he didn’t flinch when my eyes met his. I looked at the next car along, the car behind that and the one next to it. Everyone was staring.

I know a red backpack is not the most discreet way of being a tourist but there had to be more to it than that, didn’t there? It wasn’t as if Rome had never had a tourist.

The lights changed. We made our way across the road and under the old wall, past what seemed like a network of tram stations and then across another busy road.

Pete stopped on the curb, ‘Which way do you reckon?’

Don’t get me wrong, Pete wasn’t asking me for directions, he knows better than to ask the woman who gets lost in her own backyard which way to go. He was only asking which street I might like to walk down to get to where we were going.

‘I don’t know, straight up here looks good.’

There were shops either side of the street. A small, supermarcati, a pharmacia, shoe shops and clothes shops. The shoe shops and clothes shops were not the sort of shops I’d expected to see in Rome. All of them were run by Chinese people, with Chinese writing above their shops, there was even a Chinese grocery store.

‘This is weird,’ I said to Pete, ‘ I feel like we’re in China not Rome.’ And only then did it dawn on me that we were walking through the China Town of Rome. It’s nothing like China Town in Sydney or Brisbane, much smaller and less obvious but definitely there.

The big excitement came at the end of China Town, a park. Swings and things that spun and balanced, things that rocked back and forth.

‘Can we?’ Can we?’ Kai said pulling up and down on the arm that wasn’t pulling Poppy.

‘Yes, yes, we can.’

When we were safely across the road Kai and Poppy let go of my hands and raced to the park, Jack and Noah running with them.

Pete and I sat down on the bench and pulled out our books. I smiled thinking really it was no different to Sydney, China Town and a park within a kilometre walk.

The kids played for a while, happy to be able to run and jump without me telling them to look out or stop. After about half an hour Jack called out for Pete to come and get on a wooden clover shape that was balanced over the large spring. Pete put down his book and went over. I watched as Jack, Noah and Pete tried to make the clover shape balance over the spring. It was impossible with Pete’s heavier weight always pulling to one side. Everyone was laughing.

In the end Pete gave up and got off. He went over and hung by his hands from the top of the climbing net that Poppy and Kai were on. I went back to my book. It was probably a few seconds before I realised that the Italian voice that was yelling from behind me was yelling at us. I looked around to see a young dark haired guy yelling through a small shop window. He was waving his hands about in a rage staring straight at Pete. Pete who had his back to the guy was taking no notice. When the guy saw me looking at him and realised I was with Pete and the kids he turned his furore towards me. I shrugged my shoulders and put my palms up as if to say I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about and then he started showing height measurements with his hands, getting all red and flustered when he showed the taller height.

‘Hey honey,’ I called out to Pete. Pete turned his head from where he was still hanging. ‘I think the parks are policed over here and you’re too big.’

Pete glanced at the guy who was still gesticulating wildly with his hands and then let his feet drop to the ground. He came back over and sat next to me. The guy slammed the window closed.

‘Party pooper,’ Pete said and went back to his book.

In the end we had to drag the kids away from the park with the promise of, ‘Of course we’ll come back again later,’ why else do you think we flew all the way to Rome if it wasn’t to go on the swings?

The centre of Rome was about a fifteen-minute walk from our apartment. There were buses, cars, motorbikes, people everywhere; the sound of horns tooting mixed with sirens, their flashing lights blue and red. There was more police than ambulance or fire brigade. The kids got quieter the further into the city we went, no more jumping or running, although Poppy did still try to roller-shoe on the cobbled pathways, getting frustrated with the bumps. We headed straight for the railway station hoping to find tourist information and a map. The railway station, I’d noted in the Lonely Planet, was renowned for pickpocketers and thieves. The Lonely Planet said that the would be thieves flapped a piece of cardboard or newspaper in your face to distract you while they went through your pockets.

Standing in the middle of the station I looked around at all the people who were staring at us – I was starting to understand that four children was an oddity in this country, (‘quatro?’ a word we were going to know well,) - and established no cardboard, only three newspapers, pretty good odds. Then I remembered Pete had all the cash and credit cards and stopped worrying all together, he was big enough to win a fight with a flapping newspaper.

The tourist office wasn’t easy to find and the only information that came with the map was ‘there you go.’

Pete, being the map-reader, spread the map out in front of us.

‘Right,’ he said, ‘we’re here, at the train station and then he followed a road down at right angles and said, ‘and that’s where the flat is. Got it?’

‘Yep,’ I said, not having a clue.

‘So what’ll we do first?’ Pete asked.

‘How about a fountain?’ Somehow the idea of running water in amongst the chaos that called itself a city seemed reassuring.

‘Yeah a fountain,’ the kids all chorused.

We looked on the map and found a little picture of water spurting in the air not far from where we were.

‘There, down there,’ I said, proudly pointing the fountain out on the map with my finger.

To get there we had to cross the bus terminal, about twenty bus stops all joined together, and then two more busy roads. The traffic in the centre of Rome was busy, but unlike the road out the front of our flat where it had sat at a stand still, it was moving fast. Crossing the road where the traffic lights were was fine, the cars did eventually stop at the red lights. It was the pedestrian crossings that were a problem. They didn’t seem to work the way they do back home. At home if someone stands on the edge of a crossing, the cars notice and stop. Not in Rome. Standing on the curb of a crossing with four kids made no difference to the traffic, no one attempted to stop, no one even slowed.

I waited holding tight to Poppy and Kai’s hands. But Pete seemed to have got the hang of crossing the roads already. He waited until a car was far enough away that it had to notice him and then walked straight out in front, looking where he was going, not at the car. The car slowed and stopped without tooting its horn, this was apparently normal, we all followed.

Our first water fountain was in the middle of the busiest round about in Rome. It was impressive. Huge sculptures of what looked like ancient sea gods. Every god was wrestling with an animal from the water, a swan, a fish, a serpent in each case the god was winning. There was water splashing everywhere, over the gods over the animals and into the large pool below.

The kids were impressed. Kai and Poppy wanted to know if they could go swimming, ‘No’. What about paddling then, ‘No.’

I pulled out the biscuits from the red backpack and passed them around.

‘Can we balance on the little wall?’

‘Which little wall?’

‘The one that goes around the fountain?’

‘No.’

‘You never let us do anything.’

‘That’s right, eat your biscuit.’

Sitting on the edge of the fountain watching the traffic race past we listened to the water splashing behind us. Kai and Poppy were dipping their fingers in, floating a bit of paper and a bottle top they’d found on the ground. Jack and Noah were jumping back and forth over something they’d found on the ground. The sound of sirens filled the air again. This time though louder and coming straight towards us. More than one perhaps two or three.

Jack was the first one to look up from his game.

‘Hey look, there’s five of them, five!’

And sure enough, five police cars, sirens blaring, were racing towards us. The traffic made a half-hearted attempt to get out of the way as the police cars screeched around the fountain. The third car along had a police officer hanging out the front window waving something that looked like a ping-pong bat painted red. He was yelling, no doubt something like, ‘Get out of the bloody way,’ while he waved the red ping-pong bat madly.

Jack turned around with a huge smile on his face, ‘These guys are crazy.’ The police cars disappeared down a street and we all went back to eating our biscuits.

Straight across the road from the fountain was an old white building with curved walls and a cross on the top, the building spilled back into ruins that had cyclone fencing around it. At the front of the building there was a lady wrapped in a brown shawl. She was sitting cross-legged with her head bowed. In front of her on the ground was a small bowl. Occasionally people would walk past and put money in, then she would nod at the ground, never looking up.

People were going in and out of what I thought had to be a church. At first I thought only locals, but then some tourists, the obvious kind like us, backpack on and camera around the neck, walked in.

‘I think you can go in there,’ I said to Pete, remembering what my mum had said to me before I left, ‘Go in every church you can.’

‘Where?’ Pete said still watching the traffic.

‘That church over there.’

‘Want to?’

‘Yep.’

We gathered the kids and packed the biscuits back in the bag. I grabbed Poppy and Kai’s hands and stepped into the traffic, already getting used to the theory of trusting in the divine, that the cars will stop.

We walked past the lady with the bowl not putting anything in, around a wall, and then in through a door. The simple old walls we’d been looking across at from the fountain hid mosaic floors, frescos of Jesus, Mary and angels in huge dome ceilings and the biggest church organ I’d ever seen. There was a cold hush contained within the walls, so different to the outside chaos and rush that it was almost jolting. There weren’t many people in the church, those that were there were talking in a whisper, no clicking of cameras, no flashes.

‘Look up,’ I said to Jack who was standing near me. There were golden flowers in squares which covered the ceiling. They looked like they were sculptured.

‘Did you know they’re painted Mum?’ Jack said.

‘You’re kidding?’

‘No, you look, they are.’

And he was right, every flower was painted, painted so well that they didn’t look like they were part of the flat ceiling at all.

The hushed reverence of the church was interrupted by giggling, a crash, and then giggling again. I looked down from the ceiling to see Kai pulling Poppy along on her roller-shoes. Poppy was over the moon to have found smooth marble and mosaic to roll on instead of cobblestones.

‘Oi,’ I whispered and they both looked around. ‘No.’

‘But why?’ Poppy asked, meaning, ‘You’ve got to be kidding mum, I’ve finally found marble and your not going to let me skate on it?’

‘It’s a church, people come here to pray and find peace, not to listen little kids roller skating and giggling.’

‘Oh, but…’

‘No, not here.’

Poppy and Kai sulked off around the corner to where I couldn’t see them, no doubt so the roller shoeing could continue. Pete, Jack, Noah and me wandered through the church, a lot of the time our necks craned back so we could stare at the ceiling above.

It turned out that we had stumbled into one of the most treasured basilicas of Rome. It had been built within the ancient ruins of the Roman baths. Michael Angelo was in charge for a large part of the baths reconstruction into a basilica, he died whilst working on the project. I read what signs I could, trying to figure out what it was we were looking at, a lot of the writing was in Italian though, making it difficult, making me wish for a guide.

While I was busy trying to interpret the Italian Pete had found a comfy spot on a church pew. He was sitting very straight with his hands clasped in his lap, eyes closed. At first I thought he might be praying, but then I noticed his breathing was deep and slow. He insists he was meditating, disappearing into the peace of the cold stone, I thought I heard snores.

After I managed to rouse Pete we went back out into the sun and the noise that was Rome, the constant traffic interspersed by police sirens and church bells. It was nearly lunchtime and the kids had been awake for ten hours. We headed back towards our flat, unsure which street it was we had come up but knowing the general direction.

There was another church on the way back to the flat, big wide arcing steps in front of it. It was a bigger more imposing building than the basilica which had been hidden behind the façade of the ancient baths. It was obviously a church. There were spires and steeples, bells and statues; enormous wide open carved wooden doors, welcoming us and the other tourists.

We walked in, again in awe of the frescos on the ceilings and the walls, mosaics on the floors. There were more people in this church, the hush and the stillness wasn’t as obvious. Poppy and Kai, decided the rule of not roller shoeing had to be established in each new church, they were rolling again, well Poppy was rolling, Kai pulling. But this time they were quieter about it. There was no running, just a fast enough walk for rolling to happen. I thought about saying no again, but then I thought about the number of churches and art galleries to go, and decided that as long it was discreet and no one protested, it would be OK. It was the only way we were going to clock up churches and art galleries.

When we left the church there was another woman sitting and asking with a small wooden bowl pushed forward, for money. Kai was talking to Pete about the woman, wanting to know what was wrong, why did she need money? Pete told him some people, for all different reasons, don’t have money. Sometimes begging is the only way they can get it.

‘That’s so sad,’ Kai said, ‘can we give her some Dad?’

Pete pulled a coin out of his pocket and gave it to Kai.

‘Me too?’ Poppy asked.

Pete pulled out another coin.

Both of the kids walked solemnly over to the bowl and dropped their coins in.

By this stage I was walking ahead with Jack and Noah, looking for a long promised gelati. I saw a woman dressed in a shawl and long skirt head straight towards Pete, her hands out in front. She started talking in Italian, standing close enough that I’m sure Pete would have been able to smell her breath.

Pete said, ‘no,’ to what ever it was she was saying. He stepped around her holding both Poppy and Kai’s hands. She stepped with him. Pete said ‘no’ again. This time I called to him without looking at the woman at all.

‘Come on this way, there’s gelati over here.’

Pete nodded and walked forward crossing the road that I was already half way across. The woman still calling out stayed on the other side of the road.

We walked into the gelati shop and were greeted by sixteen different flavours and a young Italian guy with a huge smile.

‘Bonjourno,’ I said, feeling like a dickhead saying hello in a language I couldn’t speak another word in.

‘Bonjourno,’ he said back, still smiling.

I turned to the kids, ‘So what do you want?’

They all ummed and ahhhed and then picked out flavours they couldn’t read the names of.

I turned back to the guy and said in slow English, ‘Can we have one of the lemon, at the back up there,’ I said pointing.

‘Just one scoop or two?’ He asked in perfect English with an American accent.

‘One,’ I said, relieved at the easy comprehension.

He scooped out the ice cream, pushed it into the cone and passed it over. ‘And the next?’

Kai wanted the same as Noah, ‘Another lemon.’

‘Where are you from?’ He asked

‘Australia.’

‘Ah Australia, there’s a lot of Italians there isn’t there?’

‘Yeah lots.’

‘A nice place.’

‘You been?’

‘No. I’d like to go though, maybe next year or the year after.’

He handed over the next lemon gelati.

‘And you,’ he said smiling down at Poppy.

‘Lemon please.’

‘You should come,’ I said, ‘you’d love it. Lots of Italians and great beaches.’

He scooped into the lemon again.

‘I want to come in summer, maybe learn how to surf.’

‘Good fun,’ Jack said.

‘Which one for you?’ He asked Jack.

‘Caramel please.’

‘Good in winter too,’ I said. ‘Not so many people. We have our holidays over summer, it can get really crowded.’ I immediately felt like a dickhead, couldn’t believe I was talking to a Roman about crowds in Australia of all places.

‘No, no. I want to come in summer, want to have Christmas in the heat.’

‘Fair enough,’ I said, thinking of our own plans for a white Christmas.

All the kids went and sat at a table outside while Pete got his panna cotta gelati.

‘Twenty euros, thanks.’ Forty dollars for ice cream? All I could think was that the Italian gelati better live up to its reputation. Then he looked outside and saw the children sitting at a table. ‘You said they weren’t going to sit, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said and handed over the twenty Euro realising that if we sat our ice cream would cost even more.

Having not bought a gelati myself I had the privilege of tasting everyone’s. The caramel was sweet, the lemon so tart that I couldn’t eat without my eyes squinting and the panna cotta sweetness that had been burnt ever so slightly.

On the way back to our flat we stopped at a small grocery store to get food for lunch and dinner. There was a fantastic fruit section which we were excited to find, having been warned of the lack of fruit and veg in Europe. We piled it into our trolley, potatoes, banana’s, apples, zucchinis, oranges. Then we tried to work out which was the full fat milk and which butter had salt in the end we gave up and just grabbed the closest one. The bread we chose ciabbatta, baked on the premises.

Going to the checkout we thought we we’d been very clever negotiating our first Italian supermarket. We started to pile the fruit and veg up on the counter, one of those black moving ones, just like at home. The fruit and veg were all loose, saving on plastic bags. The woman behind the cash register stared at the fruit and veg spread out and rolling towards her then stared at us. She stood up from her stool and started yelling out something in Italian to the guy in the fruit and veg section, waving her hands about madly.

I felt a redness creeping into my cheeks, very aware that there were three people queued up behind us waiting. Three Roman’s who were probably very good at honking their horns when they were out in the traffic.

‘I think there’s something wrong with the fruit and veg,’ I said to Pete who was standing behind me with the three-dollar bottle of wine he’d found.

He put the wine down on the counter. ‘Must be the plastic bags,’ he said and started to gather all the fruit and veg back into the trolley.

The woman behind the cash register was now laughing, so was the guy in the fruit and veg section. Pete went over to the fruit and veg man. All our fruit and veg was taken out of the trolley and put in to separate plastic bags, then weighed, a number pushed on the scales and then a sticker with the price on it stuck on.

While I was waiting for Pete to come back with the fruit and veg I paid for the rest of our food that had already gone through the cash register, thus keeping the cashier moderately happy and all those that were queued up behind me. The cashier even managed a smile when Pete came back with everything bagged up.

By the time we got back to the flat it was two in the afternoon. After a sandwich made on the best ciabata I’ve ever tasted it was time to sleep, the kids though didn’t agree. With a sandwich in their belly they were full of energy again and ready to bounce around the flat. There was no way they were going to bed while the sun was still up. I was too tired to argue. I left them in the small lounge/dining room arguing over a game of uno. I knew if I didn’t lie down I was going to fall down.

I don’t remember Pete coming to bed, even though he came in only a few minutes after me. I don’t remember hearing the kids at all, even though our bedroom door was left open.

When I woke up the flat was quiet and it was dark outside. Pete was lying next to me snoring. I took my watch from the bedside table and went out into the small kitchenette to see what the time was. Six thirty, we’d missed our first afternoon in Rome. The couch in the lounge/dining room had been pulled out into a bed and Poppy, Kai and Noah were spread out across it, still dressed in their clothes. There was a split deck of UNO cards on the mattress between them and Noah still had his cards in his hands.

I pulled Noah up and walked him into his room where Jack was already asleep. I flopped him down beside Jack, pulled off his shoes and threw a blanket over him. Then I went back to the lounge room where I did the same for Poppy and Kai, turning the light out as I left.

Crawling back into bed I didn’t realise I’d made a big mistake, that I should have woken everyone up. At three in the morning we were all awake again, pillow fights in progress.

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