Note: I wrote this while I was still on the trip, but didn't get around to posting it until now.
Rome is not as fun as Milan was. People here are definitely more rude, and the staff at stores and restaurants all seem annoyed to have customers. In other places I've been, I would say that it's because I look like a tourist, but I think I blend in pretty well here, and everybody starts talking to me in Italian. I can get through basic transactions in Italian, and people do seem to speak good enough English that I can get things done, so I don't know what the deal is. Anyway, my luggage was supposed to arrive this morning at 10am and nothing has arrived yet. The (only slightly rude) person at the hotel desk assured me that usually luggage comes in the middle of the night, if it's going to come at all, so maybe they meant 10pm.
Aside from the rudeness from people I've interacted with, people drive like assholes and the road configuration is somewhat poorly defined. I'd definitely have trouble driving here if I rented a car. It's not as bad as Bulgaria, but definitely bad. I see a lot of the selfish, mean-spirited driving that I associate with Atlanta.
Another annoying thing is the fact that the sidewalk is filled with people selling random junk, and beggars doing odd things. As in Sydney, beggars on the street never approach people directly to ask for money, which is nice. But in Sydney, they would sit out of the way and look pathetic, and it seemed to work OK for them. Here, people would lie prostrate in the middle of the sidewalk, or in doorways (until they get shooed off), or in curl up as if praying on the ground in parking spots. I'm not sure if they're just doing it to be annoying, or if they're hoping someone will trip over them or run them over so they can pretend to be injured. Either way, it's annoying.
The people selling random junk are equally annoying, and they do accost you on the sidewalk. When it's raining, they're selling umbrellas (they offer you an umbrella even if you're obviously carrying one); when it's sunny they have sunglasses; when it's dark they have trinkets that light up. An especially irritating thing they have are these little disks that you shoot up off of a stick, and as they whiz through the air they whistle and light up. That's fine, and if you do it right the disk goes straight up and then straight back down and you can catch it on the same stick you tossed it up from. But instead they shoot them up at a slight angle, so that they land on people, and then the tosser (har!) starts yelling at the person like they're going to steal the disk.
Milan wasn't like this at all. I liked northern Italy much better. If I come back to Italy, I'll try Venice; maybe that's different. Or Sicily.