Roseyland

Click here to read all of my Italy trip posts in proper order.

Hey look! Roseyland is back. I know, you’re excited, totally understandable. I just got back from a trip to Italy, and now, I’m going to tell you all about it. I loved the blog post I wrote about my trip to London & Paris last year. You can read them here. I shouldn’t admit this, but I go back and read those post every few months or so. It’s a great way to revisit the experience. Naturally, I now have to do the same thing for my Italy trip.

Where to start? How about food. Ahhh the Italian food. It’s nothing like the picture below. This picture was taken in the Charlotte, North Carolina airport. They have great BBQ in the Charlotte airport. See that thing that looks like a giant french fry? That’s a fried pickle, and it’s awesome. I went to Italy with my Aunt (from Nebraska) and my Mom (from South Carolina). I arranged it so that we could meet up in Charlotte and fly to Rome together. This was our last meal before boarding our 9 hour flight.

After a couple hours in the airport, we boarded US Airways Flight #720 from Charlotte to Rome. This was on an Airbus 330. The picture below is from my seat. During the flight I was constantly comparing the US Airways Airbus 330 to the American Airlines Boeing 777 that I flew on to London last year. At first I liked the 777 a lot better, because it was a bigger aircraft and felt roomier inside, but the 330 grew on me. It might be a tad smaller, but the 777 had 5 middle seats, which means some poor sap get’s stuck with two people between him and the aisle. That would suck. Also, US Airways has a better in flight entertainment system than American airlines. I say this because the movies are truly on demand in that you can start them whenever you want, on American, they just play in continuous loops, and you have to catch the movies when they start. That being said, US Airways didn’t have a situational display that would show you where the aircraft currently was and how fast you were flying. Although I think the TSA might have made all airlines get rid of those.

Despite my best efforts, I didn’t get any sleep during the flight. I did watch three movies though. When In Rome, Date Night, and something else that for the life of me I can’t remember. I’m sure it was really good though. By the way, the fountain in the movie When In Rome, it’s not a real fountain. You can’t find it in Rome, so don’t go looking for it, that would be a total waste of time.

Upon arrival we went through customs. The italian customs process is much less strenuous than the UK customs process. The UK will have you fill out a form and ask you a few questions, the Italians, they look at you and stamp your passport. Which is fine by me, because it’s a lot faster. Since there were three of us, I decided to rent a short term apartment for our stay. I was a little nervous about this, because I like the connivence and security of a hotel, but this apartment got good reviews on Flipkey.com and it was about the price of one hotel room. It all worked out well and the apartment people were nice enough to arrange a private driver for us from the airport for €50. Below is a picture of our apartment’s living room. There were also two bedrooms, 1 bathroom, and a terrace that you had to take this tiny spiral staircase to get to.

All in all our apartment was pretty nice, but you did have to go up these steps to get to it. Not only that, before these steps there are three more flights of steps and these two weird metal gates that had to be unlocked to get in or out. The locks were strange too, I don’t know how, but they functioned differently from american locks, and it stressed me out every time I had to deal with them.

After settling into our apartment, we headed out to see Rome and get oriented. Below is a picture of Piazza del Popolo This piazza was pretty close to our apartment and we ate lunch at a ristorante here. I had some type of risotto. It was good. After walking around for a bit, we realized that it was just too hot and we were too tired to keep going, so we heading back to the apartment for a short nap until it cooled off a little.

Later in the evening, we headed out again. Our first stop, the Spanish Steps as seen in the picture below. Lots of people here. See those guys with flowers, they are really annoying. If you are female, they insist that you take a flower (because you’re beautiful of course), then if you take one and nobody pays for it after a few seconds, they take it back. I believe these are mostly illegal immigrants. Every once in a while the police show up and they go running, but they come back just a few minutes later. It’s like this weird game they and the police play that nobody ever wins. Fortunately we didn’t have to deal with this kind of activity too much in Rome, I thought it was a lot worse in Paris last year.

This is the Fontana della Barcaccia that sits at the base of the Spanish steps. Supposedly the water streaming into the fountain is drinkable, and I did see people drink it. I was not that brave however.

After the Spanish Steps we walked to the Fontana di Trevi. Pictures don’t do this fountain justice. It’s beautiful, and huge, and I wanted to swim in it. This area was also packed with people trying to see the fountain. There is a video of this fountain on my Flickr page, you should check it out.

Next we headed towards the Pantheon and ate dinner somewhere along the way. The Pantheon was closed, but it still looks pretty impressive on the outside.

This is the piazza in front of the Pantheon. I think this might be my favorite place in Rome. See that ristorante on the right with the yellow table cloths and brown wicker chairs? That was our favorite restaurant in Rome. We ate there twice. The guide books will tell you to avoid the restaurants on the main piazzas, because they tend to be tourist traps, and they are probably right, but tourist trap or not, I loved this restaurant. The waitress was super friendly, there is a great view of the piazza and the people, with the Pantheon in the background. Music was always playing from somewhere, and the food was great. On a nice night, it’s just amazing. If you ever want to go sometime, I’ll buy dinner.

This is Piazza Navona. Somehow I thought this would be a bigger deal, because it looks like a big deal on the map. It was cool, but there were a lot of other piazzas I liked better. Like that one in front of the Pantheon I just talked about.

After a lot of walking, we got gelato at the famous Giolitti. It was very good. I had chocolate and carmel with whipped cream. Their chocolate chip (called stracciatella) is also very popular. A quick side note, at the bars and gelato places in Italy, you pay first at the cashier, who gives you a receipt, then you take the receipt to the bar where you order your food. So don’t just go up to the bar and order food, you’ll look like a silly tourist, but they’ll still be nice to you. Also, bar doesn’t mean bar, bar means counter service like restaurant where you can get coffee, pastries, sandwiches, etc…

That’s it, day 1 is over. Tomorrow we tour the Vatican, hopefully we’ll be over our jet lag by then. You can see more pictures from my trip here and a few videos here.