No Wonder Rome Wasn’t Built in a Day
(T) I’ve always understood the expression “Rome wasn’t built in a day.”, but I didn’t come to appreciate it until I saw Rome for myself. Many tourists try to see Rome in 1-2 days which really isn’t enough time. We spent 3 full days and 2 half days there and feel we could’ve spent easily another 3 without getting close to running out of things to do, but it was enough time to check the big ticket items off the list.
September 20, 2022
By noon we were on the train from Siena bound for Rome. We had one connection. Aside from a 2-hour delay at our connection, we arrived in Rome without any issues. We decided to be extra adventurous and go for taking the bus to our hotel. We waited, and waited, at the platform for our bus to come. After enough time had passed for it to pick us up twice, we investigated and found the pickup point had changed and was not well marked. We crossed some streets and walked a block or so and were quickly picked up. 30 minutes later, we got off the bus and walked about 5 minutes to our hotel. We decided to relax for the evening and pack a lot into the following day.
September 21, 2022
If you want to increase your step count, Rome is a good place to do it. We chose to walk everywhere instead of taking the bus or metro and it was a great way to see more of the city.
First stop, and what turned out to be G’s and my favorite was The Pantheon. We love how it’s unassumingly situated in the middle of a neighborhood, is free, all the historical evolutions it’s gone through, and the engineering feats of the building (how is there a big hole in the top but just by opening the doors, when it rains, the inside doesn’t get wet? So cool!).
Next up was the Trevi Fountain. It was crowded but we managed to snap some photos without too many people in it.
Then, we walked all the way to The Colleseum. We definitely recommend booking your tickets far in advance for The Colosseum, Roman Forum, and the Vatican. We arrived a little early, so we hung out by an OG arch de triumph for about 20 minutes. We had purchased a special pass so we were able to explore the main level of The Colosseum, too. I couldn’t help but imagine the place filled with thousands of people watching whatever violent spectacle was going on almost 2,000 years ago. Whenever I see historical places, I also always think about just how many generations of people have seen or used them, and how the surrounding area has transformed over the centuries.
The day wasn’t over yet, and fortunately, we had quite a bit of daylight left. So, we made the short trek to the Roman Forum. The Roman Forum is massive, with almost 5 acres of preserved downtown Rome dating as far back as 498 BCE. Temples, churches, markets, and pillars are all found here. It’s such a cool snapshot of what daily life looked like. It was my second favorite place. We wandered through The Roman Forum for about an hour then hiked up Palatine Hill for the amazing panoramic views of Rome.
What we didn’t know is our tickets included entry to Caesar’s Palace! The real Caesar’s Palace! And we happened to get there right as the last tour began. It was all in Italian, but we didn’t mind. There was an interesting light show that demonstrated how the rooms would have looked on the walls.
After the tour, we walked around Palatine Hill for a while, taking in all the views.
By this time, it was starting to get dark, and I was beyond hungry. I’m not me when I’m hangry, so G and I agreed it was time to find a place to eat, after walking by Circus Maximus, where the chariot races took place, on the way. Good thing for me, this was a brief stop. We found a little restaurant, ate, and rested our feet for a while. We still had a good 30-minute walk back to our hotel, so after we were full and our feet were ready, we got up and started on our way. We attempted to see La Bocca della Verita statue, a statue of a face with an open mouth, translated as The Mouth of Truth. Unfortunately, it was fenced off, so we couldn’t test its ability to detect lies. Maybe that’s why it was fenced off?
Raking in about 20,000 steps for the day, we made it back to our hotel where we had no problems sleeping that night.
September 22, 2022
After our jam-packed day the day before, we decided to chill. The only things we did was went to a handmade pasta shop for lunch and a wine bar next door to our hotel for dinner. Chill days are important to bake into long itineraries.
September 23, 2022
We had tickets to The Vatican booked for the evening, so we were waiting to visit St Peter’s Basilica until then, which we would later learn was a mistake. During the day we walked up The Spanish Steps, walked around the neighborhoods, and ate a late lunch at a restaurant our hotel recommended.
It wasn’t time to go to The Vatican yet so we let our food settle for about an hour then walked over to it. Our tickets included a happy hour, but we thought that was just a glass of wine, however, it turned out to be a full meal. Had we known that we would’ve skipped lunch! We ate our second lunch and then began our tour. We marveled at the ornate decor and murals on every wall as we walked through the chapels. This awe we felt was accompanied with the question of, “at what cost was this all built?”. A frustrating thing to me is you’re allowed to take photos of almost everything, but not The Sistine Chapel. And why? So you can buy the images.
It was time for St Peter’s Basilica! When we got there, it was obviously closed. So beware: if you purchase evening tickets to The Vatican, go to St Peter’s Basilica beforehand. We thought we couldn’t enter earlier than the time on our ticket and that St Peter’s was part of the tour. Alas. We snapped a nice night picture sans tourists and decided this would be a good reason to return to Rome.
September 24, 2022
We got up, packed, ate breakfast, then decided to take an Uber to the train station rather than take the bus again. It’s a much faster option. Soon enough, we boarded a train for Naples.