Hello again! I fell behind with Greece, so I’ve got to make sure I stay up to date with Italy! We are spending quite a bit of time in Italy so I’m not sure how many posts this will end up being.
Since starting to write this, we have also been in Florence. Instead of writing two blogs back to back, I’ve decided to include Florence in this one as well. Sit back and get ready for a long one!
Rome: Day One
We arrived in Rome at 6:30am after our horrific wake up at 2:20am in Santorini. Due to the time difference, it was like we had been up since 1:20am. We decided that we needed to make the most of the day there so we just pushed through and went to a bunch of sights!
Our first stop was Trevi Fountain. The fountain gets extremely busy during the day so we knew we had to make it our first stop and get there early. We dropped our bags at a baggage storage place and started our walk.
Along the way we went down many amazing looking streets – a theme through Europe! The Italian flag was draped from many windows and the buildings had a different feel to them than other places.
We got to the fountain and it was already getting busy! They were still washing down the streets from the previous day and everyone was getting their photo by the fountain. It’s a pretty amazing fountain! We got our photos and started walking towards the Pantheon.
We didn’t really know what to expect with the Pantheon. Neither of us did classics in high school so we didn’t really know what to expect in most of Rome! We arrived at the Pantheon and saw that you have to make a reservation on the weekend. It’s free to enter, but you’ve just got to book. We jumped on the website and it says you have to book for a day in advance. It let us book for today anyway and the earliest spot was 11:30am. We decided to go for it and then we thought we would just try our ticket right away. They let us straight through even though it was about 9:30am!
The Pantheon is currently a Catholic Church and has been for about 1400 years. It has the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world. It is an incredible piece of architecture and engineering. The building itself is about 2000 years old! It is one of the best examples of Roman architecture still remaining probably due to its care by the Catholic Church.
Inside the ceiling is open in the middle of the dome so when it rains, the water comes in. The floor is sloped all around this area and there are drains located throughout. There is plenty of Catholic symbolism throughout the building and it is a pretty stunning place. We really enjoyed it and were glad we went to check it out!
Next stop was Piazza Navona. This is a square with a large fountain in the middle of it which represents the 4 known continents from the time it was constructed. It was pretty cool. Found out that in August every year they used to block the drains in the fountain and flood the square as a tradition. They haven’t done it since the end of the 1800s though. It would have been nice, however! It was getting pretty warm already.
Next we walked to the Spanish Steps. There’s nothing particularly special about the history of these steps other than they were a way to connect the church on the hill with the square below. It’s a pretty amazing staircase and of course we walked to the top. We first got told off by the police for sitting on the steps. Turns out it’s illegal and you can be fined €250.
At the top of the steps we found a seat in the shade where we could people watch and chill for a while. We were feeling pretty exhausted by this point and had to push through until 2pm when we could check in! While sitting there we watched men try to scam people by handing them roses. They would usually approach a couple and put the rose in the girls hand. They say that it’s a gift for them and then they would proceed to ask the guy for money to pay for it. Most people would refuse and hand the rose back, but usually the men were pretty hesitant to take them back and would rather have payment. Most of them women would just put the rose down and walk away. It was great to watch. It’s amazing how many people actually paid!
For lunch we found a pizza place that was on our walk to the hotel. We shared a pizza and wasted some more time sitting around! Eventually it was 2pm and we went to check in. This was followed by a much needed nap!
In the evening we went to a pasta place nearby our hotel. We both ordered pasta and it was delicious! Miriam ordered the house wine and the smallest portion she could get was 250ml for €2.50! It somehow worked out to be about 3 glasses of wine! It was pretty good wine as well. It was a nice way to end our exhausting day!
Rome: Day Two
On our second day in Rome, Miriam was feeling a bit worse with her cold. The exhausting day the day before was a major setback unfortunately! It didn’t stop us getting out and about though.
Our first stop was the Roman Forum. This is an ancient city centre from 2000 years ago with various parts of buildings still standing. It was very hot but we enjoyed looking around and seeing the various parts. It’s incredible that such a busy city was at some stage forgotten to the point where for a couple of hundred years it was a farm and vineyard! Imagine you own a farm and the house you live in used to be the residence of Roman emperors!
The next stop was the Colosseum. This was the big stop for the day. We got in pretty quickly (turns out we were lucky because the queue was massive when we came out!) and started our walk around. The first thing you see when you walk in is a cross on the side of the arena. This is apparently where the Pope comes to start the Easter celebrations each year.
You go upstairs to the top of the Colosseum and there is a museum that outlines the uses for the Colosseum throughout the centuries. It’s pretty amazing seeing the models that has been made of it along with how it used to look when it was in full use. I had always wondered about the floor of the building and it turns out that it was wooden with lots of alleyways and trapdoors underneath it. They would lift bears and people up through the trapdoors using pulley systems. Pretty crazy stuff!
We enjoyed walking around the rest of the Colosseum and imagining where seating would have been and what it would have been like to have been there when there were 70,000 people and a big event happening. It’s pretty insane to think that so much of the building has survived so long! It’s only due to pretty advanced construction methods (and loads of slaves) that the Colosseum even exists at all.
After the Colosseum we headed back to our hotel to have a rest. It is still extremely warm in Europe and there is only so much walking you can do before being exhausted!
We found a new place for dinner that night and I had a lasagne! Lasagne is my favourite food and I was very keen to try it in Italy! It was amazing. I think the fresh pasta and sitting on the side of the street makes all the difference!
Vatican City
Our final day in Rome was to be spent in Vatican City. The Vatican is actually its own country so even though I’ve included it in the Italy blog, it is still country number 13 that we have visited.
We got to Vatican City at around 9am to try and get there before the queues at St Peter’s Basilica. The line was already looking long but it was moving fast. We had made sure to wear clothes that covered our shoulders and shorts down to the knees because they’re very strict with the dress code at the Vatican!
The basilica is stunning. It is the largest cathedral in the world and can hold 60,000 people standing. Beneath the basilica is the believed burial site of St Peter and below among the burial sites of many popes, there is a tomb for St Peter.
The church is only about 400 years old and was built to replace a cathedral originally on the site which was falling apart. It has long been the centre of the Catholic Church and is the burial site for about 91 popes. The original church had more tombs but they were mostly destroyed for the construction of the current church.
Once we had finished walking around the church we headed out into the square. We thought the queue was long before we went in, but it was now wrapped around the square! So glad that we went early. We sat around in the shade for a little bit before finding somewhere for lunch. We had tickets for the museum at midday so got some pizza as an early lunch to get us through.
After lunch we made our way to the museum. We had booked tickets through Get Your Guide because the official Vatican website was sold out. This ended up being great because there is a special entrance which skips the queue and once inside you just have to go to the ticket desk and swap your voucher for a ticket. The ticket desk for Get Your Guide was also empty with no queue! We were inside within minutes. It was great!
The main thing to do in the Vatican museums is the Sistine Chapel. We decided we would check out another museum first and from a vague translation of the sign it seemed like we were going to a missionary museum. We ended up walking an insane distance to get there. We didn’t realise that you just need to follow the signs all the way through the whole complex and you’ll see everything in the order that makes sense. The place is a maze. We eventually got to the museum and we found that it was actually just a bunch of artefacts that we assume were given to various Popes over the years. There wasn’t a whole lot of information about it though. We found a section of Māori items – although again, we can only assume because there was no sign. It was in the area of other oceanic items.
Eventually we made our way back to the beginning of the museum and followed the path to the Sistine Chapel. To get there you have to go through the main collections of the Catholic Church. There is so much stuff that they have accumulated over the years! There is art, pottery, sculptures and so much more. They have had them on display for a few hundred years for people to come and look at.
One of the best rooms we walked through was a hall of maps. The walls were covered in maps from around the world and the ceiling was painted with loads of pictures and covered in gold. It was pretty cool!
Eventually we found a sign that said one way was to the Sistine chapel through more museums and the other way was the fast route to the Sistine chapel. We had seen enough vases by this point so we took the fast route! We got into the chapel and were shuffled with 100s of other people into the middle of the room. What an incredible work of art! The paintings on the walls and ceilings are incredible. You aren’t allowed to take any photos inside the chapel so we just stood there and looked at everything to take it all in. Everyone is supposed to remain quiet in there which I think would have been great, but most people are talking. Occasionally someone comes over the mic and tells everyone to be silent and it lasts about 15 seconds.
The work by Michelangelo is stunning. So many depictions of biblical stories all over the ceilings and walls. We really enjoyed the time in there!
After seeing the chapel, we sat down in the garden in some shade for a little while before calling it a day. We were pretty tired and Miriam was feeling quite run down from her cold. We headed back to our room and decided it was time we just sat around and did nothing for a bit! It was nice to have a chill afternoon and we even just got Maccas for dinner.
Florence: Day One
In the morning we got on the train and headed for Florence! It has been a while since we’ve taken an intercity train and it was great to be back! Trains are so much less stressful than flights. You just rock up 10 minutes before and get on. No security, no passport control, nothing to really worry about. Thankfully we don’t have another flight for about a month so it’ll all be trains and buses from here!
We got to Florence and checked into our hostel. We then went out for a bit of a walk to check out the area. Our main stop for this day was Ponte Vecchio which is a bridge that is famous for having high end jewellery stores all along it. It was pretty cool! It’s definitely the thing Miriam took the most photos of in Florence.
In the evening we cooked ourselves some food in the hostel because it had been a while since we have had the opportunity to do that. Italian food has a lot of carbs and not many veges! We were definitely craving veges at this point.
Florence: Day Two
On our second day we headed over to the Santa Maria Cathedral. We got there around opening time and it was insanely busy. The queue to get in wrapped halfway around the cathedral! We spent heaps of time walking around and taking photos of the outside because it is an amazing looking building. We looked into doing the dome walk and going into the cathedral but we decided that we would rather spend time checking out other things than standing in a queue!
We next walked over to Piazza della Signora where there is a replica statue of David. It was pretty cool to see a replica of this famous statue in the position that the original used to stand. We had decided that we didn’t need to pay all the money to go and see the original!
The rest of our morning was spent walking around and looking at buildings and taking photos before heading back to our hostel to have some lunch and relax.
In the later afternoon we headed out again to see if the cathedral queue had died down. We ended up bumping into friends from home Ella & Ryan. We had planned to catch up with them for dinner but ended up spending the afternoon with them which was nice! The queue for the cathedral was still very long so we decided to just leave it for now.
While walking around we also bumped into friends Leah & Aram (Leah & Ryan are siblings here on a family holiday). We made plans to all catch up for a drink before dinner which was great! It’s always nice to find friends overseas!
For dinner we went to a pizza place after a couple of failed attempts at 2 vegan restaurants that Ryan & Ella had sussed out. Weirdly the first one’s kitchen didn’t open until later and then they had no tables and the second one was closed even though it said they were open and we were able to book a table! Dinner ended up being really nice and it was great to spend time catching up! Ella works at NZME with me but in ZM so it was great to chat about radio for a bit! It’s been two months since I’ve been at work and I am missing working in radio!
Florence: Day Three
Our final day in Florence we had booked a wine tasting tour in Chianti. We had been really keen to go and see sunset at Piazza Michelangelo but hadn’t been able to in an evening yet! Because of the wine tour, it was looking unlikely that we would make it for sunset, so we went up there in the morning to check out the view. It is an incredible view out to the whole of Florence! I’m glad we did it even though we didn’t get to do it at sunset!
We found a panini place for lunch which was delicious and then walked back to our hostel to get ready for the wine tasting.
The wine tasting was awesome. We took a bus out to Chianti and went to a vineyard, a quality control house, and a medieval village called Radda. Chianti wine is subject to pretty strict requirements in order to call it a Chianti Classico wine. We got to try 6 different wines over the course of the afternoon. The quality control house was pretty cool. It was in an old church which then became a monastery. Apparently the land had been excavated at some stage to find that wine had been produced there for over 2000 years! We sat in a room and a lady taught us about wine and how to taste it while we got to taste 3 different ones.
The last stop on the tour was a medieval village. It was really cool to see a village built within the walls of an old castle! It was a nice place to stop before heading home.
Once we got back, we found somewhere to eat and got ready for bed as it was getting late! We had such a great time in Florence and hope that we will return one day!
Sorry it’s been a long one! Bye for now! 👋🏻
