Italy Trip

This was a dream trip to the eternal city of Rome. As a history enthusiast, always loved visiting places of historical importance, what can be more exciting than Rome! We had a total of 7 days including travel days that gave us 5 whole days to explore the city. After spending hours on a balanced itineary, we decided to include couple of day trips as well. Rome by itself can take more than the time we spent but as a first time visit to Italy, we decided to maximise our trip. Hopefully there will be more Italy trips in the future for us to explore other areas and we would love to get back to Rome. Its beauty, culture & history cannot be expressed in words, it is an experience of a lifetime. 

Sharing our itineary and some titbits of the places we visited in this trip.

We reached Rome on a Sunday night and after a to-go dinner we had picked up on our way out of airport, decided to put our feet up & be ready for the next few days to come. 

Tip: We took the airport taxi, it was pretty seamless, instructions are all over the airport. It was supposed to be flat rate of 55 euros, we had 3 cabin bags & 1 checked in bag, though we checked with the driver before we took the taxi, he charged 60 euros citing that we had more luggage. He hardly spoke English and we decided not to argue with him. Alternate ways to reach the city from the airport are a train or a bus. These options are less expensive but not by a lot and taxis are much more convenient especially reaching at night.

We checked into our hotel "Locanda Viminale" which was in the "Republica" area, on our way to the hotel we saw the beautiful church of Saint Mary Majorie lit up and welcomed us to the eternal city.

Day 1 

• We started the day by taking metro to Spagna station, started the day at Spanish steps. Climbed to the top, ended at Monty church. The obélisque Sallustiano, an Egyptian-style obelisk, stands right in front of it. There is a church at the top of the steps 'Trinity Church' which was closed to general public and was only open to guided tours. The view from the top of the steps was beautiful and we took lot of pictures there.
• Our next stop was for a walk at Borghese gardens up until the lake. A small temple is there on an island in the lake which is dedicated to: Aesculapius (or Asclepius), the Greek god of medicine and healing. From there we walked to Piazza del popolo. It used to be official residence of the pope & was the first thing people saw when they entered Rome from the north. It was designed to impress. There are two churches adjacent to each other. One is called Santa Maria dei Miracoli and the other is Santa Maria in Montesanto. In the center of the piazza stands the Flaminian Obelisk, a 24-meter-tall Egyptian obelisk brought to Rome by Emperor Augustus. The obelisk is surrounded by four fountains with lions, designed in the 19th century. On the northeast corner is Santa Maria del Popolo church a Renaissance gem filled with masterpieces by Caravaggio, Raphael, Bernini, and Pinturicchio. Here in this church is a chapel called Ceresi chapel where they had 2 famous paintings - conversion of Saint Paul & crucification of St. Peter both by Caravaggio famous painter. 
• From there we walked to the Trevi fountain. This fountain was fed by aqueduct built by Agrippa, son-in-law of Augustus in 19 BC it still brings in water to the city. The sculptures were built in 1762. It was too crowded and the fountain was not opened to throw in the customary coin. We took lots of pictures & went to Trevi church there then walked to Ignacio’s church which is another beautiful church in the area. We had lunch in a hole in the wall kind of place called Pizza mozarilla, it was delicious and seemed super popular. 
• Then went to Pantheon which is technically the third one built on the same place about 2000 years ago. We did a guided tour and learnt a lot of cool facts, it is still a functioning church. This is where Raphael is buried. On the way to Pantheon we stopped by at the temple of Hadrian a beautiful pillared structure. Entrance is free and there is a museum and a video documentary showcasing the history of the place. It has a nice sitting area to rest our feet and take a break. Went to Saint Maria Supra Minerva church near pantheon,  St. Andrew delle vale church after that. All beautiful churches very closeby to each other with paintings on the ceiling like the Sistine chapel. We viewed the ceiling through the mirror placed strategically on a table. It was amazing. 
• Next we went to Piazza Navona an open space where an ancient colosseum used to stand. Now it has a huge fountain with lot of crowd and small shops everywhere. 
• Next we went to Caesar assassination place via Campo de fiori an open market to see the ruins that is in the middle of the city where Julius Caesar was killed & burned. 
• We wound up the day, dropped off Tadu at the hotel. We luckily got an appointment for the Holy door at Saint Mary Majorie church, one of the four churches that has holy doors. These holy doors open in jubilee years once in 25 years, lucky that 2025 is one. The church had several chapels, huge statue of a pope who is buried there. Prior to Sistine chapel this church had the Manger of the Christ where baby Jesus was kept after his birth. On our walk back to the hotel, had a small cup of pistachio gelato which was a yummy finish to day 1. 

Day 2 

• We had breakfast in the room & took the metro to Octavanio station to get to the Vatican. We started walking from the station along with the crowd and found we had to change course to get to the Vatican museum which was our first stop. We navigated through the packed crowd and somehow made it to the counter for picking up museum tickets by 9 am at which time our tour was supposed to begin. We had a great tour guide who explained the various paintings of the Sistine chapel at the start of the tour using an interactive visual display. From there we first went to the Egyptian museum, from there saw the dome of the basilica. We went to many other rooms of paintings, sculptures, tapestry, artifact from ceiling to floor. Almost all rooms had art on the ceilings as well. If not paintings then decorations. Don’t think such art exhibits exist anywhere else in the world. It was amazing. The tour was for 2 hours, at the end of the tour we were allowed into the Sistine Chapel where we now saw all the paintings from the interactive display 'live' on the walls & ceilings. Michelangelo didn’t leave any space to paint inside the chapel. The main painting is of the Judgement day as told in the Bible. Two sides of the walls have stories from the Old Testament on one side & New Testament on the other side. We were allowed to sit, experience the paintings, ambience for sometime. We came out of the chapel and still were not done. We went through more rooms of various artifacts and finally ended up in the souvenir shop. We saw several important paintings of Christianity, Passage of keys was a significant one. It shows Christ handing over the key to St.Peter asking him to build the basilica on the rock he stands. 
• We had lunch at the cafe in the museum & came out of the museum into the city and entered through security clearance to St Peter’s square. It was a vision to remember, huge open space surrounded by very roman tall huge pillars almost forming a semi circle with the dome at the center. We had appointment for the holy door, so we went through the door touched the ornate carvings in the door and entered the basilica. Don’t think we have seen anything as huge as this one. We spent quite a lot of time inside the basilica soaking in the beauty of enormous statues, art, decorations. We found the entrance to underground tombs with some difficulty as there was no clear directions available. But we found it and saw tombs of several popes from the recent one to the first St Peter. These tombs mostly did not contain the remains, those were stored one story further underground in the necropolis. It is a separate tour & we did not go inside. Peter’s tomb was given special treatment and on top of his tomb is the dome. 
• After we finished with the tombs, we went to the dome by taking elevator to the first level, we had paid tickets for that. It took us to the terrace which overlooks the square. From there we weren’t sure if we would climb to the next level or not. But we did all the 551 steps, the path was narrow, claustrophobic but somehow we managed it. The view from the dome was fantastic especially of the square. We spent sometime there, came down from the dome, took one last look at the center altar & departed from the basilica. Coming out we saw a huge statue of St Peter with the key. 
• We bid adieu to the basilica and walked to Castel Angelo which is actually a mausoleum of king Hadrian. We just viewed from outside, it is a large structure about 5 story tall that was built long ago which had been a prison, church, second home to royals during the course of time. We saw the Tiber river snaking its way around the fort. The entire place just looked fabulous. We started our 40 min walk to the train station stopping along the way for some pizza & gelato. Never eaten so tasty ice cream or pizza anywhere else. We had at the least walked 17000 steps & our feet needed rest, so we returned to our room at about 6 pm. 

Day 3 - Day trip to Florence & Pisa

• We had an early start, our train was at 6.40 am to Florence. We woke up early got to the train on time. Train ride to Florence was close to 2 hrs, from there we took another train to Pisa which was about an hour long. We reached Pisa around 10 am. From the station we took taxi for about 20 min drive to reach the tower. The Pisa tower was awesome. We took plenty of pictures there, we didn’t climb to the top. There is also a beautiful cathedral, baptistery where basically they used to baptize people for hundreds of years. We climbed to the top floor of it which was perhaps about 75 steps. There was also a cemetery kind of a building which housed tombs on the floor, on the walls everywhere from 1300s. We also visited a museum where they housed plenty of Christian artifacts. Tadu was convinced by then that he needs to be baptized. We walked from Pisa to the train station, our train was at 1.30 pm. On the way we grabbed pizza for lunch, the walk was quite nice almost reminded of the Brussels except Pisa looked much older. We took the train back to Florence. 
• We were already tired, but our train was only at 9.45 pm, so we had some time to kill. We first visited the Lorenzo church which was first built in 393 AD & original portions of it still remain. This church was supported by the Medici family a royal family of Florence and it houses several of their ancestral tombs in it. It was a really pretty church with old paintings on the walls. 
• We next moved to Florence duomo which was spectacular. Duomo is a church called Santa Maria del Fiore with a huge dome, right next to it is a much taller bell tower. And a baptistery which is all next to each other with a very unique geometric outer design, fantastic architecture and craftsmanship. The doors were all carved in metal and each individual piece was such a layered design it is three dimensional and everything had a story carved out. Inside of the duomo was quite simple, we just sat down for sometime to rest and decided not to go up the duomo. 
• We walked from there to Piazza Della Signoria where replica of David stands along with the fountain of Neptune. Original David in at Academia gallery in Florence but we didn’t go there. This David is the masterpiece of Michelangelo which is the statue of the biblical David who fought the Goliath with a sling and the stone. Apparently it is so powerful for the way Michelangelo created the statue with such powerful gaze, youth and virility which became an inspiration for many that followed. There is one other statue in the Piazza which is huge. On the way we saw several naked human statues, that’s how the romans built. 
• We also sat down for sometime in another piazza on the way which was also quite beautiful. The entire area was for shopping, leather market which added to the crowds. I checked out the leather market which was quite overpriced so didn’t purchase anything. 
• We then took leave of David one last time and walked towards Point Vecchio which is a bridge on the Arno river.  It was a beautiful bridge that had plenty of jewelry shops and other Knick knacks on it with pedestrian traffic only. It was a beautiful place for some photo ops and the place was swarming with tourists. 
• From there we took a taxi to a place called Michelangelo Piazallele which is a hill overlooking the city having gorgeous views of the city and people were gathered there to witness sunset. 
• We enjoyed the views for sometime and took a taxi around 6.30 pm to a restaurant called La Spada for dinner. It opened only at 7 pm so we just waited outside for sometime & went in as the second customer of the night. Food was ok with portion size quite small. We finished it with some dessert which was really good and walked from there to the train station. We had to wait for about 30 min and then took the 2 hr journey  back to Rome. We were so tired, walked about 21k steps and slept for the most part of the journey in the train. Reached the room at about 11.30 pm, slept around midnight to get ready for yet another day of activities. 

Day 4 - Day trip to Pompeii

• We had a day trip for today as well. We took the 7.40 am train to Naples. It’s about an hour ride, on the way to t train station we bought some Crème filled croissants and hot chocolate which we ate in the train. Our seats had a nice little table so that was convenient. After an hour we reached Naples, we had to take another local train to Pompeii. That was a bore, it was very crowded, only had standing room, and was a slow train. 
• We reached Pompeii after almost 40 min. Our tour was at 11.20 am, so we had some time to kill, spent sometime at a cafe eating French fries & coffee. Original plan was to finish Pompeii and return to Naples and spend rest of the evening exploring Naples till our return train to Rome which was at 10.40 pm. We came with a spur of the moment decision to go to Mt.Vesuvius after Pompeii instead as that was advised as a 3 hr excursion which seemed relatively less walking compared to Naples. We bought those tickets at the Pompeii station & proceeded to the tour of Pompeii. The tour was for about 2 hours and it was one of a kind. Our guide was great, shared lot of information with us. It was wonderful to see how the town must have been all those years ago before the volcanic eruption and the remains that have been evacuated was telling a great story. We saw some original paintings, marble mosaic even a ‘beware of dog’ sign. We saw a theater that have been excavated from the rubble. We saw some preserved human remains which had turned into stone. We spent about another 30 min to an hour after the tour exploring more on our own. 
• There were still areas we didn’t go as we were hungry and headed out of the ruins to a nearby restaurant. We had pasta for lunch and walked back to the station to proceed with the Vesuvius tour. 
• It was a hotter day and we just wanted to get into the van that would take us to Vesuvius where we get about 1.5 hrs to explore on our own and the van would bring us down. We took the 40 min ride to the mountain top. Right before our stop it started pouring and we were left in cold rain. We scrambled to find a shelter but didn’t find one. We bought ponchos and just managed in the rain, but thankfully the rain stopped after sometime. Tadu wanted to hike to the crater which we were told is a round trip of 20 min. So we started hiking in the wet mountain path decorated in ponchos. We managed to reach the crater and it was beautiful but it took much longer than 20 minutes. After clicking some pictures there and caught our breadth we started our descent. We reached on time to meet our van which then brought us to the Pompeii station. 
• We had to wait there for about 30 minutes for the next train. We managed to squeeze into a crowded train and reached Naples. We were very tired and tried to take an earlier train but that one had departed 10 min before we reached. So we took a taxi to a pizza place for  a Neapolitan pizza for dinner, returned to the station to wait for our train. Finally took the train back to Rome and reached about 11.30 pm. We walked to the room and finally put our feet up around 12.15 am. An adventurous day came to an end!

Day 5 - Colosseum day

• We took the metro for Colosseum appointment a 9 am. We went on individual tour and spent about 1.5 hours inside the colosseum, visited the arena, walked around its first floor. We could see the underground from where we were. There was a small museum attached that explained the time of the gladiators and colosseum history since then. At one point Rome had more than 100 of such colosseums and had 14 thousand gladiators. It is a spectacular monument and it literally have been preserved by placing a giant cross in it bringing it under the control of Christianity. 
• We then walked to the palatine hill. It was a great uphill with ruins from old palaces, temples, tombs, gardens. It also had a huge open recreation area where various sports activities were held which is just referred as the circus Maximus. A large portion of one of the palace is still standing after about 1700 years. It was a hot day, we decided to take a break and eat a quick bite as we realized that we had only a single entry ticket. 
• We ate at the only cafe there, rested our feet for a bit and proceeded to the Roman forum. This is an expansive valley of ruins from temples to houses to tombs to streets, basilica, several other important political Roman structures. Roman senate was held in the forum. We started at the arch of Titus and proceeded inwards. The giant columns were spectacular. We walked through the century old streets, some statues are still standing and the details of these statues were simply amazing. These places were constructed even before the Roman Empire during the time it was a Republic. The latest structure built there was the arch of Constantine which was from about 400 AD. We also found the place where Caesar’s burnt remains are kept. Overall though hot & tiring it was a rewarding experience. 
• We exited the colosseum and decided to go for early dinner so walked for about 15 min to the next attraction the Vittorio Emmanuel monument. It had a lot of steps to climb, we did that somehow and reached the top floor. We sadder to forego the roof and the museum, just enjoyed the great 360 degree views and headed downstairs. 
• We tried to taxi to the last church St Laterans which houses another Holy door and thought it also had the holy stairs. We made it to the door with just 10 min left before closing time. Entered the holy door, inside was spectacular, it is another really old church. Holy stairs was outside in a close by church which just closed, so we returned to the room. We were tired so we rested for sometime. We went to an Indian restaurant called Gandhi 2 for dinner which was very close up our room. We had an amazing dinner, returned to the room & crashed. 

Day 6 -Travel day

• We had a late start to the day, finished breakfast, checked out at 9.45 am. We left our luggage at the hotel & proceeded to the metro to go back to the Holy stairs. It was quite crowded with many pilgrims. We managed to get in between groups and were inside in 10 minutes. The holy stairs is made of 28 marble steps which Jesus climbed to get his punishment. The stairs was brought to Rome around 400 AD by Emperor Constantine’s mother Helena. It is now covered by wood for protection. Devotees climb the stairs on their knees and silent prayer throughout. We did not climb the stairs, took an adjacent stairs instead and reached to the top where there is a shrine that has divine structures from around that time. There were also other chapels. It was old ,quiet and amazing. 
• We returned to Republica area and went to Saint Maria of Vitoria basilica. It was quite an old church, with several areas under restoration. This is where the famous Ecstasy of Saint Teresa sculpture is there. 
• We wound up our trip and reached the airport for a 4 pm flight back to US.