Ciao! We have recently returned from our wonderful trip in Italy. It flew by faster than we could have imagined, but it was a very memorable trip. There will be other posts to follow this one, but I wanted to give a quick recap of our trip and share some of the awesome pictures we took! You can see how we prepared for this trip in a previous article written by Jacob!

Flights

It took us 3 plane rides to get into Italy, which was far from ideal. It made for a long day and a half of travel that ended with an 8 hour flight into Fiumicino from Newark. We would have preferred to fly direct, but it was the cheapest option.

How we got around

We used public transportation the entire trip. Rome has a pass called the Roma pass that allows you to use the metro and buses for 48 to 72 hours (we did the 72 hour pass) and also allows you to get into two attractions for free. We used our two free attractions on going inside the Colosseum and the Castel Sant Angelo.

Rome

We started our trip in Rome and spent 3.5 days there. We got into Rome about 1 pm and into our apartment around 4 pm local time. Luckily, we weren’t jet lagged and were able to spend the evening around the Colosseum.

The Colosseum at dusk is beautiful! We walked around in awe of how massive and pretty this structure was. The best part about going to the Colosseum at dusk is that it isn’t as crowded as it normally is.

Our next day in Rome we went to the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon. We planned on spending this day in the middle of the city and because of that, we saw and did a lot. The common theme we had between seeing all of these buildings was that everything seemed so much bigger in person. We just couldn’t believe how big everything was. Pictures don’t do justice to the size of these massive buildings.

Day 3 in Rome was spent almost entirely in the Vatican city. We had bought skip-the-line passes to see the Vatican Museum that included the Sistine Chapel. The amount of art and sculpture in these museums is incredible. There were countless times where all we could say was: ‘wow’.

The Sistine Chapel, unfortunately, wasn’t as enjoyable as the other parts of the museum. We felt rushed to get in and out by the staff and it was so jam packed full of people, we were constantly having to try to stay close to each other. Don’t get me wrong, the art was incredible and is a must-see. Hopefully our experience was just bad and others don’t feel the same way we do.

The next day in Rome was our last full day. We spent the morning going inside the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. The afternoon we went inside the Castel Sant Angelo and tried to make it in time to see the Basilica San Giovanni, but weren’t able to make inside. We also made another night trip to the Trevi Fountain in hope that there would be less crowd (we were wrong).

Rome Recap

Rome is an incredible city with so much to see. We felt we did a pretty good job of trying to squeeze everything we could into the 3.5 days we had there, but there was still plenty we didn’t see. We felt that we could have spent the entire trip in Rome and still had plenty to do and see at the end of it.

Florence

Shortly after checking out of our airbnb in Rome, we caught a bullet train to Florence. We checked into our airbnb after a stressful bus ride with all of our luggage on a very small bus, and headed to the Galleria dell’Accademia. We had bought skip the line passes beforehand, but the line didn’t look very long without it. This was a smaller museum that featured the Statue of David.

Once again, we were amazed at how big this statue was. Pictures certainly don’t do it justice. That same evening we went to the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Flower (also the Duomo) and walked around the outside of this massive church.

Getting around in Florence was usually easy because everything was pretty close to each other. Our airbnb was somewhat out of the way, but we could still walk to most everything with 15 minutes. Because of that we were able to see most everything that we had wanted to see that first night, including the Condotta and the outside of the Uffizi gallery.

The next day was our last full day in Florence. We started it off by hiking up close by where our airbnb was to a lookout point. This was probably one of my favorite parts of Florence just because it was such a great view of the city. We found a cute church nearby this lookout point and spent some time exploring in there before heading back down. Back in the city, we went inside the Duomo, which wasn’t quite as impressive as the outside, but still very pretty. We also walked over the Ponte Vecchio, which had a bunch of high end jewelry shops.

Every first Sunday of the month, Florence allows people to enter into museums for free. We took advantage of this by going into the Pitti Palace, which also included the Galleria Palantina.

Florence Recap

Florence is a very pretty city with some amazing things to see. We all felt that we didn’t know what else we would have done in Florence and felt that the almost 2 days we spent there were more than enough.

La Spezia and the Cinque Terre

We took another train through Italy to a town called La Spezia. La Spezia is a port town on the west Coast of Italy. We didn’t spend much time in La Spezia, but the time we did spend there we really enjoyed it. We basically used La Spezia as a springboard to go to the five towns in the national park called the Cinque Terre. The first night there, we went to a town called Riomaggiore and spent most of the time just staring at the sunset and the ocean.

The next few days we spent hoping in between the 5 towns and even hiking from one town to the other along the coastline which is more cliff than actual coast. The scenery is beautiful there and the ocean makes it even better. We found that some of the towns were more crowded than others. For example, when we were in Riomaggiore and Vernazza, the crowds were almost too much, but in Monterosso al mare and Manarola we felt much less claustrophobic.

We were able to spend a little time on the beach and in the ocean. The beach in Monterosso al mare is probably the closest thing to sand, but still is very rocky and can hurt your feet. The water was pretty cold, but was enjoyable after getting used to it.

Cinque Terre Recap

It was really nice that we were able to spend our last days in the Cinque Terre. It was definitely a change of pace from Rome and Florence, but in a good way. We loved being able to see the ocean and the beautiful scenery that the Cinque Terre had to offer!

On the way home

We had another 3 flights to get home, but this time we had a large gap in between our flight from Rome to New York, so we decided to spend the night there and the morning exploring the 9/11 memorial before we headed out. I got sick on the way back and so it was really miserable for me. Being sick on a flight is probably one of the worst places to be.

Final Thoughts

We had an incredible trip! We definitely felt that we could have used more time, but felt happy with what we had and what we were able to do with it. Italy is such a beautiful country and the people are so friendly. Everything about our trip made me really want to go back to Italy soon.

If you would like to hear more about certain things about our trip, let us know!