Francesco is a really nice guy but unfortunately we didn't meet him til 5 hours before we left since he was out of town most of our trip. The neighbourhood is a cool area with great Italian restaurants (eg Trattoria Pigneto) and street art around. It's about 20 mins transit and 45 min walk from the centre (colosseum etc). One thing we found kind of hard was that our clothes and luggage smelled like smoke after the trip. Also there was no toilet paper for 2/3 days. Be aware that you will wake up at 8:45am because of the church bells ;) Uma the dog is a sweetheart