Our 10th Anniversary Trip Part 2: Rome!

Hey, friends!

This past summer my husband and I went to Italy for our 10th anniversary, and it was such an unforgettable trip that I thought I would share our tips and trips with you all in case you, too, ever want to take such a trip.

I started by sharing what we packed; the things we are so glad we brought, as well as the things we didn’t end up using, and you can see that post HERE.

And since we visited three different cities during our trip, I decided to break these posts up by city, with the first one being all about Venice, and today’s is all about Rome!

While Venice was picturesque, easy to get around, and absolutely charming, Rome was filled with SO much history that it just left us constantly entertained and in awe.

We arrived in Rome on our third day of the trip, about midday, and checked into our hotel, The Marcella Royal, which was located centrally in Rome, and truly we had no complaints. The staff was very friendly, the views on top fo the hotel were wonderful, and it came with a complimentary breakfast each day that was more than just cold cereal, which we enjoyed.

The first landmark we visited was the Pantheon. This is free to the public and was the first piece of architecture that we saw in Rome, and it was really cool, but if you are short on time in Rome, I think this is one stop you can skip. The Pantheon is where the Romans went to worship the Gods, and again, it was fun to see, but there is just so much more out there. 🙂

This is the only light in the Pantheon, and it allowed people to “contemplate the heavens.”

Our next stop was the Trevi Fountain, which is located pretty close to the Pantheon. With this little tip, this is definitely a stop you aren’t going to want to miss. One of my Instagram buddies let me in on a little secret that changed the whole experience for us. The Trevi Fountain is extremely crowded and a place that we were warned to be careful of pickpocketers at. So while we went down by the fountain, threw in a coin and snapped a pic, it wasn’t a place that we wanted to hang at for very long. UNTIL!! Now here comes the cool secret…

Directly across from the Trevi Fountain is a hotel named the Hotel Fontana; if you go to the reception desk once inside the hotel, ask to go up to the upstairs bar. The person behind the desk will tell you that it costs $15 each to go up, but that includes any drink off their menu, which ranges from $10-$15 anyway, and you will be GLAD YOU DID.

Because once up there, we had a little room ALL to ourselves, which included a private, crowd-free, air-conditioned view of the Trevi Fountain! We truly felt like VIPs and were blown away by this secret. Soon after arriving, a waiter named Issac came to take our drink order, and we could basically order any drink we wanted, even those not on the menu. He let JD go up to the liquer cabinet and choose any liqueur he wanted, and then brought us a little complimentary tray of snacks to enjoy.

Before we left, Isaac took us to one of the empty hotel rooms, opened the window for us, and let us take pictures of the Fountain right up close. It was so cool!

This is an experience not to miss! One of our faves of the whole trip.

After the fountain, we made our way over to the Spanish steps. The night before we had watched THIS episode of The Amazing Race, which had participants having to count the steps in order to move onto the next phase. So, we tried counting them ourselves and could never get the number right, either. It was tricky! And also gave us a good workout.

The next day was our TOP EXPERIENCE OF THE TRIP. This is when we visited the Vatican Museum, but it wasn’t the crowded, hot tour you may have experienced or might think of when you imagine visiting this hugely popular museum. Again, an Instagram buddy informed me of a tour called Wake Up the Vatican Tour, where you are in a group of no more than 20 people and you get to tour the Vatican before it opens. No lines, no crowds, it’s nice and cool… and it was PERFECTION! And the BEST part is that you get to open all of the doors and windows to the Vatican for the day which is truly an unforgettable experience!

There were about 12-15 rings of keys just like these ones that we used to open the doors! I was blown away; no master key here!

There were only ten people in our group, and I was asked to open the first door. I was nervous! Haha!

Normally, from what I am told, seeing each exhibit is difficult with so many people, so being able to freely walk around the museum and take in everything it had to offer was truly special.

We also got to turn on the lights in each room, so if you can imagine standing in this long hallway and waiting for the lights to turn on, and then seeing this view?! It was breathtaking.

We were also permitted to enter areas of the Vatican that are normally off-limits, including THIS. One of the popes way-back-when had this built so that he didn’t have to walk from the bottom floor to the top. This allowed his horse and chariot to carry him up!  Because this is in a fragile state, the public isn’t normally allowed into this area.

Now, I am probably going to butcher this story… but… when this statue was discovered years and years ago, it was missing part of an arm. A contest was held for sculptors to create a new arm, and the winning arm stuck straight out resembling jazz hands. Once Michaelangelo saw it, he immediately knew it was wrong and took on the task himself to create a new arm. That arm is now attached to the back of this statue, away from the public’s eye (seen below) as years later, the original arm was discovered and re-attached. The crazy part is that the original arm and the arm Michaelangelo created are incredibly similar, bent in the same position. This statue is normally roped off and you aren’t allowed to go around it to see what’s behind, but we were allowed to.

(Michaelangelo’s arm)

Husband opening one of the many gates.

And the windows; this was SO COOL!

The Gallery of Maps was another one of those areas that once lit up, took everyone’s breath away. It is SO amazing to see this hallway without anyone in it!

AND YOU GUYS. I got to open the door to the Sistine Chapel. THE SISTINE CHAPEL! And below is the key that I used to do so. It felt SO surreal!

Normally, photos aren’t allowed once inside, but people taking this tour are allowed to take as many as they’d like!

 

At the very end of the tour, we were given the option to buy an exact replica of the key to the Sistine Chapel for $10, something only offered to those on this tour. So, of course, we bought one!

After the tour ended at 8:00, we were fed breakfast in the courtyard. Then, we were allowed to go back and visit any of the areas we’d like with the museum now open to the public.

So the first thing we did was check out St. Peter’s Basilica, which was SO insanely huge and incredible!

This tour was our FAVORITE thing we did on the entire trip. It is a splurge. But absolutely worth every penny!

After the Vatican, we were ready for some kind of lunch, and ended up stopping at La Siciliana, where we had one of the best, cheapest lunches of the whole trip! Two slices of pizza, a beer, a cappuccino, and two treats only cost us $12! And everything was delicious!

All of these little goodies were only around a dollar or two!

While on our trip, we learned that our favorite restaurants were the ones we found on our own, and that weren’t recommended or on Yelp. We started walking around and looking at what people were eating, and if we liked what we saw, we ate there. That is how we ended up at Bottiglieria, which was probably the best restaurant we ate at on the whole trip. First, doesn’t it look like a painting?! (See below.) This was our one fancy indulgent meal and it was GOOOOOD. To give you an idea, we ordered three appetizers (ha!), a bottle of wine, and two entrees… and the total was around $100… really not bad, right!? We were also given limoncello shots, complimentary of our waiter, who was fantastic.

The next day we did a Coliseum, Palatine Hill and Roman Forum Tour, and I ate this up! I LOVED studying this stuff in school and thought this was so cool. We booked a Skip the Line tour, which did just that; no lines. Just google “Skip the line Coliseum tour” and you can choose one to your liking.

This is walking up Palatine Hill, which is where the wealthy lived, as well as the Pope during the summer months.

Going on a guided tour for this was really nice as we learned all about the history of these areas, that of which we knew very little of prior.

And once at the top of Palatine Hill, we were able to overlook the Roman Forum.

I was FASCINATED by the Roman Forum! It was basically Rome’s city center back in the day and was actually built ON TOP of years and years later until Mousellini ordered it to be dug up.

After the Roman Forum, we went into the Coliseum and this was just so overwhelming. To actually think people were sacrificed like this for entertainment back then is just unreal.

Underground is where all the animals were kept before being released on stage.

When Christianity came to be, and the church took over, this type of entertainment was no more. A cross was placed where the Emperors sat to pay respect for those who lost their lives here.

We were STARVED after this tour, so we walked directly across the street, again, looked at the food at the 2-3 restaurants lining the street and settled on Cafe Martini, which was SO good. We ordered the calamari and Caprese salad and both were so fresh and delicious.

Plus, the VIEW!

After lunch we went to the Aventine Hill where you can find the Aventine Keyhole, which is a semi-secret in Rome. At the end of a random rcul-de-sac you will find an unmarked large green door, and when you look through the keyhole you will see a PERFECT view of St. Peter’s Basilica. It’s actually REALLY cool!

My husband just googled the Aventine Keyhole and was able to locate the address, and it looks like this at the end of the street.

This was the best photo I was able to take of it.

After this we went to the grounds where the chariot races were once held, officially called Circus Maximus. Again, this all fascinates me so much! We even went down and walked the same grounds once raced upon.

Next we visited the Mouth of Truth, which was believed to bite off the hands of liars. So, tourists come to this site, stick their hands in and hope they leave with them!

 

After we did ALL of that, we were pretty tired, so we decided to sit at a little cafe, have a drink and game-plan what we wanted to do on our last night in Rome. We both hopped on our phones and started googling, and soon after I suggested we do a cooking class. This wasn’t something my husband jumped on, so I didn’t push it, but after about 20 minutes of not being able to decide, I suggested it once more and he agreed, though I could tell he wasn’t all-in. There wasn’t a phone number on the site, but we were able to tell what general area they were in, so we decided to walk over to the area, see if they had room, and if they did, great! We’d do it. If not, it wasn’t meant to be.

We found this little sign, pushed the buzzer, and were asked to come right up after explaining what we were after. And luckily, they had room! AND, we paid a cheaper price than offered online! (Look for a green door; it had been freshly painted that day (which is why there are newspapers on the ground.)

So after signing up, we had about an hour and a half to kill as the class didn’t start until 5:30, so we ended up wandering into this store, which was really close to where the cooking class was, and this store offered free balsamic tastings, which was something we really wanted to do! We ended up buying two little bottles of our favorite bottle, which was so fun for us.

We had about an hour left before our class, so I suggested we grab a small bite to eat. My thought was we probably wouldn’t be eating until later, and going into a cooking class hungry probably wasn’t ideal, so we stopped at Ai Tre Tartufi, which was right around the corner from the cooking class in Piazza Navona (which is the name of the little square). We were lured in by the owner, Angelo, who ended up serving us and sharing his story of how he lived in LA for 18 years!

Once at the cooking class, we were served appetizers and as much Prosecco as we wanted.

The first thing we made was dessert, which was Tiramisu so that it had time to set up in the fridge.

We then moved on to making the pasta, and we made two kinds; stuffed ravioli and a pesto spaghetti. Neither of us had done anything like this before, but we both really enjoyed it!

In fact, after about 30 minutes my husband turned to me, gave me a huge hug, and thanked me for suggesting we do this as he was having such a good time. And afterward, he said it was one of the highlights of his whole trip, which of course just made me light up!

Once we finished making everything, we sat down with our group and ended up sitting there, chatting and enjoying our meals until almost 10 pm!

Our chef, who also works at one of the finest restaurants in Rome.

And the kitchen we worked in:

After the cooking class, we decided to check out the Trevi Fountain one last time to get a good nighttime view. But this time, we didn’t have to pay! When we were there a few days earlier, Isaac told us to come back at night, so we just asked for him and he took us right up for a picture!

Rome was a much larger city than Venice, with a lot more people and a busier vibe. But gosh was it SO COOL! We both really enjoyed our time while here and felt like we got the most of our time, too. We primarily traveled by foot when getting around, which allowed us to see things in a new way, stop at little shops along the way, and grab a treat here or there. We made some wonderful memories while here and hope these little tips help you to plan your stay if Rome is in your future!

And coming soon… Part 3: Positano! Stay tuned!

 

As always, thanks for stopping by!

<3 Shannon