Rome, Italy

Rome was one of those places that was kind of mind blowing, in terms of just the depth of history. History has never been my best subject but the ancient Romans is one of those things that I think everybody can remember learning about to some degree. Seeing all of these famous sights and paintings and realizing the incredible amount of history here was awe inspiring. Not to mention all of the amazing food!

Hotel

As always when traveling, the first thing we do is look for a Hilton or an IHG hotel to stay in, as these are the programs we have loyalty with. This usually means we get upgrades because of our status (thanks to their credit card programs) or at the very least we are building more points. In this case we were able to stay in the lovely Hotel Indigo St George for free with our IHG points!

The hotel was in a great location, walkable to nearly everything (and walk we did) and very cozy. We were upgraded to a room with a balcony which was so nice to relax on between our marathon sprints of sight seeing. Austin also took full advantage of their sauna.

Day 1

We took a late evening Thursday flight so that we could wake up and have the whole day Friday in Rome. Since we got in late, we made sure not to plan anything for Friday morning so that we’d have plenty of time to rest. We knew first thing when we woke up that we needed to go in search of coffee to start the day.

Bar Amore Di Zucca Fabio

This cute little coffee bar was close to our hotel and was our first stop in Rome. It’s in a charming little alley and only has a couple of tables. It was a nice day so we opted to sit outside (when you are used to the Netherlands, anything that isn’t rain feels wonderful). We each got coffee and a cornetto (the Italian version of a croissant - I don’t know if this is standard, but every one we had was slightly sweeter and softer and had a very light citrus flavor). It was such a lovely start to the day!

We spent the rest of the morning just wandering around and exploring - a few plazas, the Spanish Steps, and the Trevi fountain (one of the only landmarks I really knew, thanks to the Lizzie McGuire movie of course ;) )

Labottega Pastificio con Cucina Roma

After a few hours of exploring we realized we should probably eat some food, but didn’t want to do anything too crazy because we had a food tour booked in the evening. Austin found this place around the corner from our hotel - it looks like a very small place where workers in the area might grab a quick lunch to go. The food we had there was amazing and ended up being one of Austin’s very favorite meals in Rome. I had cacio e pepe (because it’s a Roman specialty, and also delicious) and Austin had some kind of chicken ravioli, which he loved. My go to meal for the last decade when there’s no food in the house has been buttered noodles with parmesan cheese (yes I’m 12 years old I know) so cacio e pepe to me is a dream because it’s a more grown up version of my go-to.

The Roman Food Tour

When we have time and are in food oriented cities, I love doing food tours as a chance to get introduced to foods I might not have tried otherwise and get oriented to the city that we’re in. We chose this sunset one of the “Trastevere” neighborhood.

Our group started out at a little wine bar where we tried some wines and some charcuterie - a lot of great bites of cheeses like Parmigiano Reggiano, some very fancy and delicious balsamic vinegar, and some amazing meats like Parma ham. Unfortunately I was too caught up in the tastings to take any photos here.

Next we went next door to a place called Trapizino, where we ate a type of street food that is sort of a cross between a panini and a calzone. I opted for an eggplant parmesan one which was excellent.

Next we walked to more of a sit down restaurant (Peppo al Cosimato) where we had pizza and were able to choose between 2 types of pasta. Austin chose carbonara and I chose pasta all’Amatriciana, which is a favorite of mine. Everything here was extremely delicious. Normally the restaurant is more focused on seafood and does these pasta dishes especially for the tour.

We ended the night with gelato at Fonte della Salute, where I got a dark chocolate orange flavor that was very worth the lactaid I needed to take to digest it. It was definitely the best gelato of the trip (and we ate gelato every night!)

Our guide was also very nice and helpful and explained a lot of things very well, and I would definitely recommend this tour!

Day 2

We started day 2 at the same place as day 1, with more coffee and cornetto. After talking to our guide from the tour, I learned that I could order an Americano and not just straight espresso, which is great for me (I don’t do milk typically unless its worth it, so I tend to drink my coffee black unless places offer an option like oat milk).

Vatican Museum

I’m going to be very honest and maybe look a little ignorant here that I always assumed the Vatican was just an extremely large church. Maybe I assumed this because I know Vatican city is where the Pope lives?

Anyway, turns out it has a very large museum with an incredible range of artworks and history, and at the end you see the Sistine chapel and the paintings of Michelangelo. Truthfully I didn’t know what I was even getting into but it was really fascinating.

We opted for a guided tour here, as Austin is both Catholic and a big history fan so he wanted to really get all the information here.

Forno Campo de Fiori

After our Vatican tour we were quite hungry and made our way to Campo de Fiori, which has a lovely market. On the corner we found a bakery which sold slices of a sort of pizza (I’m going to call it pizza, but I am not confident that is its official name and I couldn’t figure it out online) and suppli, which is a bit like arancini - it’s a deep fried ball of rice, and the typical ones have mozarella and tomato sauce inside. It tasted like a really amazing mozarella stick with the tomato sauce already inside. We got a cacio e pepe one as well, which was delicious but I prefered the original.

After a break in our hotel to rest our extremely tired feet, we headed to the Jewish quarter for dinner and more exploration.

Our dinner that night, to be honest, wasn’t really worth writing about - so I’m just going to skip it!

We did some people watching while we drank coffee/Aperol Spritz and then saw some ruins and also the ruins of the place that Julius Caesar was killed (Largo di Torre Argentina), which is now a cat sanctuary ?

We ended the night with more gelato, because when in Rome, right? ;) (I’m sorry…it had to be done)

Day 3

L’Emporio Alla Pace

On Sunday our normal coffee spot was closed so we tried coffee and cornetto in a new spot. This place is also a bar at night but was a cozy place for coffee and the cornetto was really excellent.

From there we took a taxi to the Colosseum. It was within walking distance, but our feet were pretty tired from all the walking we’d done so far and we knew we’d have a lot more today still so we wanted to conserve some energy.

Colosseum & Roman Forum

The Colosseum was the main landmark I already knew in Rome and we were excited to check it out. We decided for this one as well to go with a guided tour. We arrived early and took some photos ourselves and then met the tour. They led us first through the Roman Forum, which is a bunch of ruins near the Colosseum of some very important parts of the city back in the times of the Roman empire. It was incredibly cool and I would definitely recommend a tour of this area. I didn’t expect this to be as fascinating as it turned out to be.

We went through the Colosseum next with the same tour, which is pretty huge and incredible, especially when you think about how old it was. I would definitely recommend a tour here as well to get the full experience.

Mami

After our tour we took a taxi to a place we had spotted earlier in the day near our coffee spot for some pizza. They also had suppli so of course we had to try that as well. My pizza had burrata and proscuitto on it and it was really excellent.

Il Tarallo

For our last night I wanted to eat at one of the cute ltitle places we had walked by with the sparkly lights and the tables outside that felt very “Italy” to me in terms of all of my (probably stereotypical) expectations. After a lot of research for where we could get a last minute reservation, we found Il Tarallo. It turned out to be exactly what I wanted - it was very cute and the food was excellent.

We started with burrata and proscuitto. Austin opted for one more dish of cacio e pepe and I got some more amatriciana sauce. I had a nice glass of wine as well.

After dinner we stopped for one more gelato, which turned out to be the most disappointing of the trip (but lets be real, it was still gelato and still amazing.)

Rome was definitely a sprint to see as much as possible in 3 days, but it was a really beautiful and magical place and I’d love to go back sometime!