Tuesday 20th October 2015
Woops. I slept in again this morning.
I eventually left my hostel room at about 11am and met up with Malerie (the Californian girl from the previous night) to do some sight seeing.
As she’d already been to Rome before, she became my tour guide and took me to all the main sights.
The first stop was the Ruins and the Collesseum!
We didn’t actually go into the Colosseum (trying to save my money for Dubai) but we took some pictures outside it and sat for a bit.
I was silly and wore my new converse sneakers which are like half a size too small for me. My poor baby toes were squished for the whole entire day of walking!
Thankfully Malorie was a touch hungover/tired so was happy to rest every few stops.
As I hadn’t had anything for breakfast and it was lunch time, we stopped at one of the First Italian restaurants we saw and sat outside.
I’m so glad this is the one we came across because I then proceeded to drink the best hot chocolate I have ever experienced in my life.
It was basically pure chocolate with a generous helping of whipped cream on top. It was a meal in itself, so so so good!!!
The lasagna was just as amazing too. If this was how Rome ate, I was ready to move here in a second! 😍
When I was full of all my Italian goodness, we set out for more of our walk. We went to The Altare della Patria which is a monument built in honor of Victor Emmanuel, the first king of a unified Italy.
The monument also holds the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with an eternal flame. It was built under the statue of goddess Roma after World War I.
After walking up the stairs to the Tomb, we went to the museum of Italian Unification. We then took like 100 more stairs to the top of the museum which had a beautiful view over part of Rome.
If my eyes look squinty it was because the sun was in them haha!
There is also an elevator which allows visitors to ride up to the roof for a 360 degree view of Rome but again, we didn’t want to pay for the view when we already had a pretty great one!
When we’d taken like 500 pictures, we set off walking again and came across this really beautiful cathedral. Probably the nicest one I’ve seen so far on my travels. It was so huge! If I was to ever get married, I never really wanted to in a church but this one I would make an exception for.
Our next stop was probably another one of my favorites. Piazza Navona.
It’s a town square which was built in 1st century AD where The Ancient Romans went to watch the Agones (games) hence it was known as the “Circus Agonalis” (competition arena).
Nowadays it’s surrounded my restaurants and filled with locals selling all their artwork. I’m not one of those people who can spend hours at galleries but all these portraits and paintings were amazing! I ended up buying one painting for my wall (a small one) but if I had room in my bag I’d have loved to buy more!
Malerie really wanted to go to The Pantheon afterwards so we walked there and I attempted to take pictures but as the sun was behind me they ended up coming out really dark.
The Pantheon is actually one of the best-preserved of all Ancient Roman buildings. It’s been in continuous use throughout its history, and since the 7th century, the Pantheon has been used as a church.
My feet were killing me by this stage but we soldiered on and went in search of some Gelato for me.
Malorie had already had some at the Piazza but I wanted a better one than the place she got hers from 😌 fussy I know! They just didn’t have enough flavors for me to choose from.
We stopped at the Trevi Fountain on the way but it’s under construction until next year so there wasn’t much picture taking there.
I found my Gelato in the end (but didn’t take a picture) and it was sooo good! The third amazing thing I’d eaten that day haha.
We sat down and rested our feet while I had my Gelato and talked for a bit.
Malerie mentioned going to the Spanish Steps so I Googled mapped it and I thought we were heading in the right direction until 20 minutes later I realized we weren’t haha. 🙈🙈
We headed back to our hostels after my awful mapping skills as we were in desperate need of a drink!
First we grabbed some pizza for dinner then headed to the Yellow Hostel Bar for some cider and wine.
What a day of walking! I’m glad I had Malerie there to show me lots of stuff and keep me company while I explored Rome. I defintaly wouldn’t have seen as much as I did if she wasn’t with me!
These babe’s are in desperate need of a pedicure now!
Xx
ThePassportPrincess 