36 Hours in Rome, Italy

Josh and I have been living in Italy for just over four months now, which is crazy to think about. Shortly after arriving in Naples, we knew we wanted to make a short trip to Rome. Before Josh and I knew that we were going to move to Naples, we had always discussed visiting Rome on a big European tour (that has now turned into living here for three years). One of the things that I have been most excited about while living in Europe has been planning trips to see many popular art pieces and architecture. If you don’t know, Josh and I meet in art school, I studied Photography and Josh studied Cinematography. Along with any art degree comes loads of art history classes, so I looked at way too many slides of art pieces.

Josh had a few days off work, so we started planning our first short trip up to Rome. We knew that this was just going to be a short overnight trip, so we planned out the places that we wanted to visit. We opted not to do any tours because we were in town for such a short time and wanted to squeeze in as many sites as possible. Because we live so close to Rome, we know that we can come back at a later date. If you are planning a trip to Italy any time it should be noted that August is peak tourist season and can get pretty hot most days. Most Italians take their vacations during August as well, so local restaurants can be closed for a few weeks at a time.

After getting off the train we started heading toward the Spanish Steps. That’s what Josh wanted to visit first! You can get a great view of Rome (not as good as the Park) and it’s a great place to sit and enjoy part of the afternoon. After walking around the area for a little while we started wandering our way to lunch and found ourselves at the Trevi Fountain. We found a great little pizzeria around the corner, then headed back to the Trevi Fountain. Both the Spanish Steps and the Trevi are very crowded during the afternoon, but so worth it for the sites. Next time we’ll definitely be trying to go early in the morning so we can sit and enjoy the fountain over an Italian breakfast of espresso and cornetti.

Shortly after wandering around the area where the Steps and Fountain are we started to make our way to make our way to our Airbnb. We stayed in the Trastevere area, which we really enjoyed. Trastevere area is more of a college area with lots of great restaurants and bars. Before heading out to dinner we walked up to Parco del Gianicolo, which has the best views of city. We could have easily stayed there for hours just looking at the views. We ended our evening at Bir & Fud in Trastevere, which has had the best selection of beer that have been able to get here in Italy thus far. After living in San Diego for so long, we got spoiled on the beer selection that city has to offer and miss it dearly.

j.crew tee (similar) | billabong shorts | adidas shoes

levi’s tee | shorts (similar) | herschel backpack

We started off our second day off with some espresso, of course, then made our way over to Ancient Rome. We opted to walk during trip because most everything is pretty close to each other and it’s a great way to see more of the city. As we were walking towards the Colosseum we passed the Alter of the Fatherland, which is a museum built in the early 1900s dedicated to Italian History. It is free to enter and worth checking out if you’re in the area of the Colosseum. Then we walked over to the main area of Ancient Rome.

There is so much to see in this area: Roman Forum, Colosseum, Arch of Constantine, Arch of Titus, House of the Vestals, and more. We only walked around in this area and didn’t do any tours on this trips. We are already planning our next trip this winter to do some tours, this way it’s less crowded (if you are planning to do tours make sure to buy your tickets ahead of time online, the lines we very long when we visited). Even though we didn’t do any tours, you can still see so much of the area and it’s a great area to just walk around in for a while. While in the area we grabbed some more espresso and a gelato for our stroll. Highly recommend this.

After spending our morning in Ancient Rome, we started to make the slow trek back to the train station (in which we stuck in the worse rain storm we’ve seen since moving out here). Rome is such a lovely city and we were both so excited to explore most of the city. I highly recommend walking around as much as you can if you have the time because every other corner is beautiful. But make sure you have some comfortable walking shoes, because you will need them. I wore my Adidas Originals and I’ve never had much of problem with the amount of walking that we have done.

madewell tee | billabong shorts | adidas shoes