Romantic Rome

My husband and I spent 4 nights in Rome for our “minimoon” after marrying in Mexico. My husband has a real passion for Roman History and was not disappointed. Everywhere you look beautiful buildings and statues are there to be discovered.

We stayed in a central hotel close to the Termini station however walked everywhere, even back from the Vatican! We did use the metro to get there however we liked the exercise and coming across less known places of interest. The metro is very easy to use, clean and has excellent coverage of the city.

A guide book is an absolute must if you want to fully appreciate the buildings and statues. I would recommend taking a tourist bus on your first day to get your bearings and decide on a route of where to go.

Having 4 nights gave us plenty of time to take our time, if I was to return I would probably spend 2 or 3 after knowing how expensive it is to eat, drink and shop!

A lot of places of interest are free - the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Ancient Rome and the Pantheon are the most famous. All are very busy and you must be prepared for crowds and to wait your turn to take a photo. They are also overrun with local sellers trying to sell you anything from a handbag to a rose. If you say no they are not pushy and leave you alone.

The Vatican is expensive to enter however totally amazing, you will need to allow at least half a day to visit and explore everything it has to offer. We chose to have a tour guide rather than wander aimlessly around the museum not knowing what we were looking at. There are tour guides on the walk up to the Vatican offering tours, if you take a tour you get to queue jump which, in busy summer months would be totally worth it.

The Colosseum is amazing; I was surprised how much of it you can explore. We didn’t take a tour guide however wished we had as we didn’t come away really knowing anything about it. It was too busy to stand and read the various boards with information in English.

My top tip when visiting Rome is to do a bit of research into where to eat, there are so many very average and expensive restaurants for the tourists that you could be left feeling a bit disappointed. We ate at a very lovely restaurant on our last night after finding a recommendation close to our hotel on tripadvisor.