When in Rome
Trip dates: February 10, 2017 - February 17, 2017
Well, when heading to Rome from the French Riviera, stop in Ventimiglia and Milan, then arrive in Rome.
Ventimiglia is a small border town where we swapped trains to head to Milan, and it's also where we had our first Italian pizza!
This small city was super chaotic, at least right outside the train station, and not what I was expecting. We had originally planned to walk around but since there's no bag drop and it seemed crowded to walk anywhere, we decided that we would just stick around the train station and get some food.
There was a tiny cafe and I managed to order some pizza and drinks while we killed time before our next train. It was pretty good, but just a precursor to what was to come in Rome.
We only spent a night in Milan and arrived kind of late, so the only sightseeing we did was to check out the main cathedral in the morning before our train. There were SO MANY pigeons there - Lishan was terrified! It almost felt like Venice where the pigeons take over the piazzas. And dumb tourists are feeding them, why?!
The Duomo di Milano was massive and extremely ornate - apparently it took longer than La Sagrada de Familia in Barcelona to build! It was odd that there was scaffolding on part of the cathedral along with a giant LED screen projecting ads. Guess you don’t want to lose some valuable real estate…?
After some brief sightseeing in Milan, we were off to Roma!
We stayed at an Airbnb in Rome for the washing machine and also because it was a pretty good deal. It was relatively central but we still walked a lot each day we were in Rome. There is a decent public transportation system in Rome but, as our Airbnb host said, it's so much better to walk everywhere since it's all close enough (aka ~30mins walk) and there's always something to see along the way.
Good news was that the weather was finally beautiful for a change. In our time in Europe, we’ve had lots of cold and gray days, but Rome was sunny and in the 60s the whole week we were there, which was very welcome and made all the walking much more enjoyable.
We deviated a bit from our normal travel routine in Rome in that we booked two different food tours AND a guided tour of the Roman ruins! We wanted to really experience Italian food (and the two tours we did were both worth it) and the guided tour allowed us to access areas that aren’t normally accessible to the public. Lishan will cover the food tours and our other food experiences in the next post!
It’d be really lengthy to talk about every single thing we saw, but here are some anecdotes!
- Since we are in the off-season in most places we’ve been, it generally has not been too crowded. Rome’s top attractions however, were still very crowded. The Spanish steps were full of people milling around and sitting on the steps. The Colosseum was pretty packed too, as was the Vatican museum and St. Paul's Cathedral. Trevi fountain was always chock full of picture takers and lolly gaggers. We can’t even imagine how crowded it must be in high season here in the summer.
- We went to a Capuchin museum and crypt - basically these were ascetic monks that wore signature dark brown robes with a hood (which is where cappuccino comes from). The most interesting part was the crypt, where in the 1700s, someone arranged the bones in the crypt into works of art. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to take photos and their workers were always keeping an eye on you to prevent you from sneakily taking any. With that being said, you can see some pictures thanks to google!
The Roman ruins tour that we did went to the Roman Forum and the Colosseum. The Roman Forum was interesting to hear the background of how many parts of the old buildings were recycled for usage elsewhere (often, the Vatican) and then it was actually covered for a long time since the land there was used as a dumping ground for spare earth. Our guide had holograms that showed the current version and then overlaid with how it used to look, which was really helpful in conveying a sense of what life was like 2000 years ago.
The Colosseum, though, was the highlight of the tour and it's really something special. It is one of those monuments that even though you’ve pictures of it everywhere, it still conveys a sense of awe when it’s right in front of you. Our tour included going to the main arena floor, underground, and the third floor, which all require a tour to visit. It was really, really cool to walk through the main door onto the arena floor and have all of the other tourists as our “audience” watching us.
In other news, we finally met up with our friends, Shawn and Amanda, who are also traveling around the world! They started a little before us and though we’ve covered many similar areas, we kept missing each other and hadn’t gotten a chance to cross paths until now. We hadn’t seen familiar faces since Asia so it was nice to catch up on their travels (blog shout out - http://campshamanda.com/) and life in general.
We ended up visiting the Vatican with Shamanda since it was on both of our agendas to do. The museum felt similar to the Louvre, in that the building itself was also like a ridiculous piece of art. We didn't like the layout of the Vatican museum as much though; it was just a bit confusing to know which way to go but then at other times, we felt herded around like sheep. Also, you can’t take pictures in the Sistine Chapel! And a guy on a loudspeaker kept asking for silence, even though lots of people still kept talking in louder than whispers. We ended up going back later in the day to do St. Peter’s Basilica, since the line was too long earlier in the day. It was very grand and reminiscent of Westminster Abbey in London. We wanted to go up the dome too but they closed the entrance early for no discernible reason, bummer.
As you can tell, we saw a lot in not a lot of time! So how did we make it through all these sights? Why, by eating delicious Roman food of course! Lishan's post will go into that in all of its yummy glory.
Overall though, we really enjoyed Rome. It had a great blend of history, food culture, and just very 'real' people that we enjoyed meeting. I can't imagine how much different I'd feel if it was the middle of a scorching summer and packed with even more people, but since it wasn't, I'm going to cherish this memory of Rome instead!
In fact, I'd probably recommend people visit around this time of year because most of the Romans said that this weather was relatively normal for them, so if you're looking for a mild weather destination when February has got you down, why not get some fresh pizza and old history with Rome?
