When In Rome
Rome Travel Tips - Our Takeaway
Never pay for water! Fill your water bottles from one of the hundreds of free water fountains around Rome and take that into restaurants or on your walks around town.
Don’t pay for a cab or Uber. A city bus pass and/or metro pass is extremely cheap and gets you anywhere in Rome within 40 min – mostly within 20 min. As of this posting, €18 (~$20) pays for three days of unlimited bus and metro rides using the Roma72H pass.
Make sure you book a room with air conditioning unless you’re visiting in deep winter months. Even then, Rome is HOT, so it won’t hurt to have air conditioning just in case.
Buy attraction tickets and make food reservations months in advance. Landmarks like the Coliseum begin selling tickets months ahead and will sell out weeks before you visit Rome. Popular restaurants are popular for a reason and are also booked up weeks in advance.
Avoid hotels near local churches. You will be woken up by bells every hour starting earlier than anyone wants when on vacation. This does not include avoiding the Vatican which does let people sleep.
Avoid the 429 bus route. It’s a terrible bus line packed to brim that we hated every time. Walk instead or choose a different bus.
Get out there EARLY! No, brunch time isn’t early. You need to be in line for your first destination by 8-9 am or you’re late. For example, the Vatican entry line went from no wait at 830 am to almost a quarter mile long by 11 am as shown in this post.
If possible, wait for a flight deal into Rome and let that dictate when you visit. Rome is one of the cheapest flight options into Europe (at least, from Texas). If you plan months in advance and patiently track deals using one of our preferred sites you’ll find a bargain. Even in peak season, you’re likely overpaying if you’re paying over $650 for a ticket
Our Time In Rome
Over a year abroad takes tons of scheduling, pricing, weather considerations, and destination choosing. You know what was one of the last things we planned? The start! We knew we wanted to start in Europe but we wanted to go wherever the cheapest flight took us. Yes, that’s how we decided where to start traveling – wherever was cheapest. After months of flight price tracking, Chandni found a great deal using Chase ultimate reward points. Our tickets to Rome came in at $150 each. Turns out the saying, “All roads lead to Rome” was true in our case!
Our Roman holiday was a perfect mix of pizza, pasta, gelato, and unfortunately, sweat. The moment we left the airport the heat set in and the sweat came out. Walking to the train leaving the airport? Sweat. Running to our first bus (which we missed) from the train station? Sweat. Broken air conditioner in our room? Evil indoor sweat! Gelato only cools you down so long before it turns on you and makes you a chunky traveler. So we tried a different internal coolant – ice cold cocktails day one!
Freni e Frizioni is a well loved bar that opened a second location in the Pratti district near our hotel. This new location called Freni e Frizioni Draft is a concept bar serving cocktails on tap along with pizza from an up and coming pizza maker. We arrived into Rome at night so we thought this would be a perfect easy start. We were blown away! Perfect margherita and diavola pizzas paired with excellent cocktails made us return for another meal a few days later. Everything on the menu being crazy cheap helped, too. Freni’s pizza also beats the yeast out of the world renowned Bonci Pizzarium which we have eaten at twice and found overrated each time. Waddling home from pizza and drinks, we decided the Vatican should be the first stop on our first full day traveling.
We visited the Vatican last year but didn’t fully explore St. Peter’s Basilica. Our recent Half Dome hike more than prepared us for the over 600 steps to reach the top. The view from the top of St. Peter’s was incredible! You could see all of Rome and the surrounding mountains thanks to the clear day. Our climb was helped by the unexpected pastry cafe on top of the Vatican. You read that right. You can buy ice cream and croissants on the roof of St. Peter’s! They must be meant to answer your prayers on a hot day.
Among other unexpected Vatican encounters, there’s a somewhat hidden gift shop on the right side of the Basilica (facing it) that you’ll pass leaving the Papal tombs. Prices at this gift shop are all cheaper than at others inside the Vatican. This includes cheaper holy water for sale. Perhaps this cheaper shop carries store brand holy water and the other shops carry JC brand holy water.
No Vatican visit would be complete without art appreciation. Bernini is my favorite sculptor so getting to view his creation of St. Peter’s Square, his canopy (a baldachin) over the tomb of St. Peter, and Michelangelo La Pieta in one place is a treat. Photographs never do them justice. There is a huge sense of scale standing in the plaza or looking up at the baldachin which words or photographs can’t replicate. Unfortunately, they needed to install a reinforced glass wall in front of the La Pieta thanks to Mr. Crazy smashing it up a while back.
We kept on the art track by visiting the Borghese Gallery the next day. It’s the private collection of the Borghese family that still resides in their former villa. Bernini’s two famous works of Rape of Persephone and Apollo and Daphne were mind blowing up close. The master of shadow Caravaggio is also prominently featured. The gallery admits that the powerful Borghese family wrongfully imprisoned the previous owner of one of Caravaggio’s paintings so they could confiscate and later claim it. Nothing like some casual corruption from the papal family.
In between all that we ate, drank, and ate some more. We managed to eat the original fettuccine Alfredo at Alfredo alla Scrofa - the restaurant that invented it. The dish is sooooo much better without milk or heavy cream, plus the freshly made fettuccine is as delicate as any we’ve had. We also returned to our favorite overall pasta maker Roscioli Salumeria con Cucina. They’re a bakery and pasta house meaning they feed you only the finest carbs in Rome. Nothing beats their cacio e pepe, and nothing beats a follow up to them like gelato. Cremilla really hit the spot thanks to a perfect cup of dark chocolate and stracciatella (vanilla ice cream with chocolate shavings of different sizes). By this time our air conditioner was fixed so we ate gelato because it's gelato instead of because we were oozing sweat all day.
Highly respected cocktail bar Drink Kong closed out our time in Rome – and was a perfect birthday choice. Let me tell you, five cocktails will make any time a good time, but when you have them at a place like Drink Kong they make a wonderful time. Or a wonderful birthday.
To us a visit to Rome is so much more than a checklist of famous structures like the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Spanish Steps, and other landmarks. We didn’t even try visiting those this time. Rome is about appreciating local food, art, and the cultural history once you get past the famous landmarks. It’s about finding your favorite pasta and appreciating the centuries or millennia old sculptures. The people are kind despite unforgiving summer weather. The mornings are sleepy while the evenings are bustling. Traveling to the eternal city is something Chandni and I are eternally excited to do. Allora, someday we’ll be back, but for now, we head north.
