One Woman, One Backpack

I arrived in  Rome on Easter Sunday and I knew it was going to be busy, but didn’t expect it to be as busy as it was. I did the usual drop by bags off and walk around the city thing and made it to quite a few of the tourist attractions. I ended up finding a corner shop open and bought some gnocchi for dinner.

On Monday, I thought I’d beat the queues for the coliseum by getting there early, which it seemed everyone else thought to do. I queued for the best part of an hour, I read some of my book in the queue and spent 45 minutes or so inside. One of the things that made me laugh/want to slap someone was an American who seemed to over – enthusiastically be taking a selfie whilst talking to her kid. Then I heard someone on the other end of facetime comment about how busy it was,  and she replied “oh I know,  I was just ringing to say hi.” I don’t think facetiming with the middle of the arena in the background whilst awkwardly holding a phone is “just ringing to say hi.”

The place had a lot of tourists in and had a few things on display but I left for the forum as there were too many people. I didn’t spend too long in the forum either as I’m not that interested in it, my pass for the coliseum allowed me entry.

I then wanted to have lunch. I’d marked a place on my tourist map for deep fried risotto, but couldn’t find it so instead I settled for a pizza. I then walked to the Vatican and tried to find my way to the Spanish Steps which I didn’t find, so I came back to the hostel then intended to go out after dinner to see them but the free sangria got in the way of that.

The next day I went to the Spanish Steps which had construction work being done,  so I didn’t go up. I walked around a bit, but just felt a bit meh about the city, so I went to the Pantheon then came back and planned the next couple of weeks of the trip. As usual, my plans have to change a bit, resulting in another overnight train ride soon. For dinner I went out with one of the girls I met in Pompeii to a Peruvian restaurant and then we got a second dinner at a store called Eatily.

On Wednesday I went to a cooking class for the morning where we made three plates of pasta, a veal dish and a strawberries and cream dessert, having gone to the market that morning to choose the produce. The food was great, then I went for a walk around a neighbourhood that I can’t remember the name of. I had some gelato then stopped off for a glass of port and a cheeseboard.  This time, the free wine in the hostel didn’t stop me from going out whilst it was dark outside which made Rome look nice whilst everything was lit up.