This was the first city on our list and on the first day while roaming around the city, a bird pooped on me! I was so amused. With that poop, I hereby declare that that was the official start of our backpacking travels!

Accommodation: Via Antonio Musa 6 Roma, Lazio 00161 Italy

Most of our accommodation is through Airbnb, because it is much cheaper for 2 pax as compared to hostelworld.com. Hostelworld is much cheaper if a person travels in a group of at least 4 people so they can have their own room at around $20 per person. It is also a lot easier to find accommodation if you search earlier, which we didn’t whoops.

Oh my I remember how Cherrybelly and I were SO AMAZED at the old-school lift. Having lived in Singapore my whole life, I had never seen that kind of lift before. It’s exactly the same like in the Lizze Magguire Movie! I was just watching it on tv yesterday, oh those memories. And how the owner just laughed at us when we discovered that we could open the door lock without the keys from the inside, and when we had a mini panic attack when I couldn’t find the keys in my bag even after we emptied the contents in my bag, only to realize it was in a pouch and laughed stupidly at ourselves outside the gate.

This accommodation was one of the prettier rooms we booked, although it was a bit more pricey. The house was clean and their breakfast was lovely. The couple were also very cute together and they paid a lot of attention to their home decor. Location wise, it is near to most places like the attractions and Rome terminal by train. However, it is quite far on foot. The couple gave us a map and told us all the attractions that we should go to. So, it was much easier to navigate through Rome!

Transport:

I have never walked so much in my life. Literally walked from one place to another continuously because there’s so much to do and explore. The individual attractions are enormous and they are usually close to each other so we really have to walk on and on. At the same time, we wanted to save on transport (€1.50 per ride, which is quite costly if you take it more than 2 times per day)

Their train system feels a bit similar like our LRT because it does not have that many stations, and they only have 2 train routes. There was no air-conditioning and they opened up the windows for ventilation. At the same time, we have to manually open the train doors if we want to get on or off the train. It was a humbling experience to see how simple the system was as I felt that we have been taking our MRTs back at home for granted.

They also had trams (though they call them trains) that travel across Rome side by side on the roads with all the other vehicles. We managed to take one as there was one direct tram from our house to Vatican City. Transportation wise, it is quite easy to navigate and easy to understand from the information boards.

On the first night when we wanted to head home exhausted on the first day, Google maps told us that there was a straight bus from where we were. As we were waiting for the bus, we saw some tourists getting on then straight away getting off because they didn’t have a ticket. We then realized that we did not have a ticket with us. And judging from those tourists, we could not buy the ticket on the bus itself. So, we googled on how to obtain one and it mentioned we could get it at the bus stops, so we walked on to find a stop that had the ticketing machine. After loads of walking, we found one! Only to discover it wasn’t working!!! Boo! So we looked for the next option, which is to buy at tobacco shops. We walked and walked and we couldn’t find any (either we didn’t know the shop is a tobacco shop or it has already closed at 8pm?!).

By then, we were super super exhausted and we weren’t close to any form of transport (cabs not included). Our last resort was to find the nearest train station. We had to pass by all the places we visited before to get to the train station. When we reached home, we asked the owner about the bus tickets and we were shocked to find out that we could have just took the first bus because Romans do not care about the tickets at all! Most of them just board the bus without paying for the ticket and the bus drivers are used to it! *bangs head on the wall* From then on, we just took the buses and trams. YAY FREE TRANSPORT!

On Sunday, we had to RUN for the last train thanks to the officer who forced us to run for it, as he saw us when he was heading to close the entrance from where we entered. I remembered how he pointed us the way and raised his voice asking us to run haha. Apparently, it closes early at 10pm. And that is why we should always ask our hosts a lot of questions about the city (which I didn’t think we learnt even at the end of our whole trip haha).

Attractions:

 

The whole city’s roads are made up of cobblestones, which shows how old and historic this whole place is! And vehicles drive very fast on the road without much care for the pedestrians. So, we had to cross the road bravely and make them slow down for us by ourselves.

 Colosseum+Palatine Hill+Roman forum

We didn’t go for free walking tours in Rome but we did get into the Colosseum for free! It was the first Sunday of the month, which allowed us  free entry, although I must say the queue was long and crowded. And that one ticket can get us free entry into all 3 places though we didn’t realize that. We only entered the Colosseum and looked over Palatine Hill and the Roman forum from an aerial view.

There were many instances where we got lost, but I felt blessed for that to have happened because we ended up finding new pretty places!

We also wanted to save €1.50 so we took  a one hour walk to get to the Spanish steps! Nevertheless, we had a lot of fun along the way, coupled with Cherrybelly’s attempts at teaching me how to read maps HAHA.

Food:

Recommended: BUY GELATOS AND MILKSHAKES ALL DAY ERR DAY!! We googled for the best gelatos in Rome and boy, we were not disappointed at all. Let me bring back all dem gelatos and milkshakes please!!!!!!!! It was soooo tasty and cheap in Rome! 😀

Halal food were in secluded areas, so I mostly ate Margherita pizza, which was so filling because the whole pizza was huge. One whole pizza cost an average of 5-7 euros which I think is pretty cheap!

Tap water could be found everywhere where there is a mini fountain. which we can use to drink or wash hands. You can refill your water bottle there too. It is safe to drink and it felt super good because the water was cold and we were walking in the hot sun most of the time. Their summers are pretty long (sun sets only at about 9pm!). If you feel uncomfortable with drinking at the fountain or if the fountain water makes your throat itchy, an alternative is to buy a 1.5 litres bottle and bring it around with you.

Shopping:

I remembered going to Tiger which looks like a household store, similar to popular/daiso kind of shop with really cute stuff and is pretty cheap. Bought this mini pink fan that had this handle where you have to manually turn it for the fan to work!

Also discovered the penny press machine, which became a small mini mission for me to collect them all! This was really easy to get in Rome, but sadly very difficult in other cities 😦

Overall, Rome was a good starting point and most Romans are able to communicate a with us so I felt a bit of a relief. Allhamdulillah.

 

 

PS Most of the photos in this post are taken by CherryBelly .