I don't know Rome at all well. I was there for two or three days when I was thirteen years old, and then I returned in 2008 for a couple of weeks. We stayed on Piazza Adriana, which is why Asia and her father stayed there in The Death Fairy. It was the only part of Rome I knew enough about to include in the novel.

In spite of being a short walk from Rome's biggest tourist draws (Castel Sant'Angelo and the Vatican, to name but two), Piazza Adriana is very quiet. If I lived in Rome, I would live there. Rome is a kind of human hurricane: it doesn't believe in traffic lights (they exist, but there aren't very many of them), it has far too many cars (so the drivers are cranky), and the (Roman) pedestrians are oblivious to traffic. They cross the road without looking.

There must be some kind of a law that says that if a driver hits a pedestrian, that is the end of the driver's days as a driver. But it's clear that the Roman drivers don't like that law, because they play chicken with you. If they can get by, they will, even if this means missing you by only six inches. But Piazza Adriana was calm, and pedestrians and motorists were normal.

For views from the Rome apartment go to http://photobucket.com/asiasromeapart...
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For more information, go to http://www.thedeathfairy.com.