From Sevilla we arrived in Ciampino, a town 45 minutes from Rome (life of a budget airline traveler), but easily took a bus to the center of Rome. We found our hotel, checked in (our receptionists were Filipino!), and then headed out for Lyle's birthday dinner.
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| An Italian feast. We forgot to take a picture of the pizza. |
Most everything was closed by then, but we explored the city anyway visiting the fountains and plazas.
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| Fontana del Tritone in Piazza Barberini |
Stopped for gelato even though it was cold because we're in Italy!
Rome has a pretty big Filipino community and our server wasn't Filipino but did know two phrases
"bakla" and
"putangina mo." We got him to take our picture, and even proceeded to direct us into doing silly poses.
From there we headed to the...
Trevi Fountain? Much to our surprise, it was under construction! The fountain has been drained and the statues are under renovation. They have this small pool (pictured below) though where you can throw your coins and behind it is a tarpaulin of one of the statues. (There's also a walkway where you can get up close to the real statues, but it was closed in the evening).
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| Make a wish, haha. |
We continued walking around and ended up in
Piazza di Spagna - one of my favorite plazas, though it's much prettier in the spring/summer.
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| Us trying to get the hang of taking selfies |
The next day we started bright and early with
St. Peter's Square at the
Vatican City.
It was quite rainy on Friday, but thankfully the sun came out (and stayed out) the whole Saturday.
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| Beautiful morning light at St. Peter's Square |
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| The travel pose again :P |
We had bought our tickets to the
Vatican Museum online, so we were able to skip the queue and enter at 9am.
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| The Vatican gardens |
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| Hall of statues |
Love the ceilings...
...the walls...
...even the floors!
We walked through the museum enjoying its collections, and after visiting the
Sistine Chapel at the end, had lunch outside at a nearby restaurant.
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| More pizza for me! |
We intended to visit the Basilica next, but we made the mistake of doing the Vatican Museum before the Basilica. After lunch, the line to enter was really long. Next time, or to any readers out there -- I suggest doing the Basilica first (free to enter and lines are much shorter when it opens in the morning), and then the Vatican Museum after (buy tickets online for 10am or so).
It was all good though, and we headed back to the city center to check our more sights.
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| Had to snap a picture of Lyle and Julie who were dressed like twins that day. :P |
We headed to the
Colosseo next and skipped the line again since we had bought our tickets online. There's an extra €4 fee for buying online but it was worth it in my opinion since we were a bit pressed for time and the lines were insane.
It was my second time around, but it was still as amazing as ever.
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| Getting the hang of taking selfies |
After touring the inside of the Colosseo, we walked around and to the Foro Romano. We made it just in time to the Foro Romano as they were letting in the last visitors before closing.
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| Arc de Constantin and the Colosseo |
At the Foro Romano we walked towards the direction of the Colosseo to take some pictures and man alive, the lighting was beautiful.
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| A classic beaut. |
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| The light was so good so we asked a passerby to take a nice group shot of us. |
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| Then we proceeded to take some silly pictures of ourselves. |
We walked around the ruins of the
Foro Romano which was the political, economic, religious and commercial heart of Ancient Rome. The place was big; we weren't able to see all of it, but we made it through a lot.
We continued exploring the city passing by the
Altare della Patria (Altar of the Fatherland) also known as the
Monumento Nazionale a Vittorio Emanuele II, built in honor of the first king of unified Italy...
...and several other plazas. The sun was beginning to set casting a nice glow on the buildings.
We headed back to the
Trevi Fountain to go on the walkway.
Ironically, now that it's under construction you can actually see more details of the statues since you can get up close.
Every now and then the guard would shout "Forward, please!" whenever the line would stall.
From the Trevi Fountain we walked to the
Pantheon, an ancient Roman building now used as a Roman Catholic church.
We were all desperately craving Filipino food, so after a quick Google search, we found a restaurant relatively near to our hostel. (It took us a while to actually get there though because we ended up getting off at the wrong bus stop). But it was all good; we were happy eaters with our Filipino food!
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| Nilagang baboy |
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| Liempo! |
After dinner I was able to meet up with a friend from back home who was in Rome for the weekend as part of a tour. So lucky that we were there on the same weekend! We had some coffee and donuts and made
kwento until the café kicked us out because they were closing.
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| Chrissie and I |
Great way to end my trip to Rome! :)
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