Rome Day I

Before everything became a distant memory again, I must blog this down.

The BF and I went to Italy for 5 days because Swissair was having a promo way earlier on in the year. Round trip cost us about SGD856 per pax, so we grabbed the chance!

Why 5 days?

Sadly because he's busy with work :(

Although, if you are only interested to do the touristy stuff in Rome, 5 days is certainly way more than enough.

Initially I wanted to do a collage of all the places we have went to, but this is doing my photography a disservice LOL. So only this picture would be in collage. It still felt a little surreal (now that I am blogging about it) that I was in Italy just so recently. This was my 1st long-haul flight - terrible of course.

Before I blogged about day I, I just have to say Rome FCO is as horrid as what Sleeping in Airport stated. It was ranked 9th worst airport globally. Arrival area was honestly pathetic, we probably have like 3 flights of people waiting to collect their luggages from ONE conveyor belt o.0

Anyway, there's the Leonardo Express train from the airport to Rome Termini which takes about half hour. Remember to validate your ticket before boarding the train!

We booked our accommodation on Airbnb with Giulia for SD696.

She stayed just minutes away from the station Colosseo (2 stops from Termini) and you can actually see Colosseum from the street!

Her apartment was good enough for two of us, and she provided us with biscuits, pasta, olive oil, tons of jams, tea, coffee etc.

Towels were also provided as well!

This awesome hospitality didn't just stop there, she also talked us through which places to go, where to eat and was even contactable via Whatsapp. Really nice and friendly owner :)

If you are interested to book her apartment, visit: https://www.airbnb.com.sg/rooms/432992
The room was exactly the same as what was shown in the link, so there wasn't any mismatch in expectations.

Ok back to trip.

So bf and I were very lucky to arrive on Sunday because the streets between Colosseum and Forum were closed! This was really great because we planned to do the free stuff on the day - walking from our accommodation to Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps.

The walk was rather short and directly and the weather was great - not too cold nor hot, so it was quite comfortable. Oh! Rome has clobber stones as their pavement so it is best if you can wear some non-heels or non-slippers to walk around. It's more comfortable that way.

while on the way to Pantheon, I saw this cute little car :D

then we reached Pantheon which was really huge and I couldn't take the whole building in my photo :(

fountain outside Pantheon

Bought a new lens for my GX1 - the no. 1 lens for micro 4/3 : Panasonic Lumix G 20mm F1.7 ASPH

Awesome right!

Fountain at Piazza Navona

There are quite a number of al fresco cafe/restaurant at Piazza Navona. Be prepared to pay 'tourist' price for these food though. Pasta here starts from EUR14.

Poor people like us didn't went for a heavy lunch, instead we settled for slices of pizza

at Pizza Zaza.

http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g187791-d1063124-Reviews-Pizza_Zaza-Rome_Lazio.html

Would you look at the center. The dough win any pizza place in SG hands down.

Super chewy!

Next up Trevi Fountain. Again a touristy place so it was full of people, I could hardly take any decent photos of this.

While on our way to Spanish Steps we saw a sitting Pinocchio

This is Copy (pink bottom) and Paste (blue bottom) btw, you will be seeing a lot of them in this trip.

Stopped by this place for gelato.

The owner (I think) knows quite a number of languages, thought it was a little sad he spoke to us in Chinese. Not sure if this means we look like people from a certain country or not. Yik!

This is my gelato. Unfortunately I didn't like creamy/milky ice cream so I had lemon and grapefruit sorbet.

finally we reached Spanish steps

Tons of people! It's like our Orchard Road on weekends. In fact the street directly in front is the shopping street. So there are all the branded stuff there like Gucci etc.