When in Rome

Activity level: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Modes of transportation: 🚗👟🚌 🛫

We woke up at 5:30 to pack and head to the airport. We ended up catching the hotel shuttle, which was probably slower than walking (but we weren’t in a rush).

It’s kind of strange, but it seems that you go through security before the check-in counters. The dumb thing is that they need your boarding pass… which we couldn’t get since we needed the check-in counters. They ended up letting us through with the ticket receipt, but they hassled us pretty hard about it.

Immigration was easy, though we ended up having to go through security a second time. After everything, we made it to the lounge for about 15 minutes before heading to our gate.

On the flight, we had some simple breakfast and slept most of the flight. It was fairly uneventful.

When we got in, we started to go through immigration and this lady asked us where to go. She had a strong Spanish accent, so we told her to head to the “all passports” section while we had to go through the other line. She said “no I’m American like you!” so she followed us to the automated gate. She also had no experience going through immigration, which we were sort of confused by since she said she’d travelled before. Long story short, she told us she had dementia and needed help getting to her sister at arrivals, so we helped her get her bag, through customs, and to her sister. They were very appreciative!

We were greeted by Raquelita, our (!) Aunt Nancy’s assistant saying our names (Since they expected Aunt Nancy, Eric felt sort of like when you’re a kid and someone says your mom told them to pick you up, and you have to avoid getting into their car—but that feeling passed quickly). We quickly found her car, loaded our bags, and were off.

It was great seeing Aunt Nancy! She gave us a great driving tour of Rome, which was, fortunately for us, perfect weather (which was lucky because it was supposed to be raining). She wanted to make sure we (especially Sarah) had our first cappuccino in Italy, so we stopped by a “bar” and got some light snacks and cappuccinos. Everything we tried was amazing!

We eventually got to our (!) cousin Sean’s apartment and dropped our stuff off before heading out to walk around, eat lunch, and see Rome.

It was our first meal in Italy, so we went all out. We got prosciutto and mozzarella, some house white wine, olive ascolane, and our entrees (margherita pizza for Eric and gnocchi for Sarah). The food was all amazing (but we needed to walk it off for sure).

Sean really loves to walk, so we ended up walking quite a bit. We walked through the Villa Borghese over to the Piazza del Popolo.

We had a lovely golden-hour walk through the Villa Borghese with Sean and Fillipo.

From there, we walked to the Spanish Steps and got some gelato. Then, it was onto the Trevi Fountain, where we got some photos when it wasn’t too busy (and Sarah threw a coin and made a wish).

We kept walking from there over to the Roman Forum and the Coliseum, which was beautiful at night. It felt as if we were transported back in time.

We kept walking all the way back to Sean’s place, where we crashed. We felt like we had seen all of Rome. Total, we walked about 28000 steps (11 miles), so we were pretty tired.