I visited Rome for 3 nights with my mum in early March 2024. This is the first time I’d been to Italy, but I had planned a solo trip to Milan prior to this. I went into the trip slightly pessimistic compared to previous trips as I worried that there may be a lack of exciting things to do. I thought that the abundance of historical sites may get a bit boring after a while. However, I fully enjoyed my time in Rome and it was very different to places I’d visited before. The people were the nicest I’d ever met and I definitely felt welcomed. The flight prices are really cheap, but the hotels and the prices of goods and services in the city are quite expensive, probably similar to those in London.
Historical Sites
Colosseum
This is probably the most iconic place to go in Rome. We got a city sightseeing bus to here, which was a decent price compared to what we expected. Going into the trip, we had heard that there’s not much point going inside, so we decided to just look from the outside. It was worth seeing this way, but I cannot comment on the tour.
Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel
I thought it was very cool to visit the smallest country in the world, with national border control just to visit a place within a city. The Vatican itself was good to see, however the Sistine Chapel was the most memorable for me. I’m not a big fan of art, but the artwork along the walls and ceilings were incredible. I would highly recommend visiting the chapel, and would say that it was my favourite historical site that we visited.
St Peter’s Basilica
We also didn’t go inside the basilica, as we had a place to go later in the day. The queues were absolutely huge. It looked very cool from the outside and is in a great location, with easy links from Via della Conciliazione.
Trevi Fountain
We went to the fountain at first when it was very busy and very rainy. It is recommended to visit early in the morning. In the day light it was great to see. However, we also visited at night at around 8pm an it was even better. It looked so cool lit up. There is also a wide range of shops, restaurants and bars nearby, including the Traberna cocktail bar with takeaway cocktails for £5!
Things To Do
Watch an AS Roma or SS Lazio Game
This was my favourite experience of the trip. Luckily too, the fixture was a big game in the Serie A. We watched SS Lazio vs AC Milan. The stadium is quite far away from the inner city, but is only a 12EUR taxi journey, or you could even use electric scooters. The stadium was quite empty, which is common for Italy football games, but the atmosphere was electric, and we were sat opposite the Lazio ultras. The AC Milan away fans were even better though, bouncing all game. The game ended 1-0 to AC Milan unfortunately, but Lazio got 3 red cards! The tickets were around 45EUR per person, but would be less if the game wasn’t as big. You can get tickets to these games for as low as 20EUR per person.
Walking Around the Streets
It doesn’t sound very fun, but just walking around the centre is so so worth it. The back streets are definitely what I imagined Italy would have, with the one-way roads just being wide enough for the cars. There’s so many smaller, more authentic Italian businesses such as bakeries, butchers, convenience stores, restaurants, sports bars and dessert stores, as well as people making souvenirs. On the Saturday, Nottingham Forest v Liverpool and the F1 Bahrain Grand Prix were on at 4pm local time, so I found an Irish sports bar showing them both, full of fellow Liverpool fans. The game didn’t turn out bad either!
Cocktail Bars
The drinks were great. I think Italy use a higher shot measurement too, which was a bonus. Most places were quite expensive, at around 10EUR per cocktail and like 8EUR for a lager, but we found a place doing 2 for 10EUR cocktails down a side street. These were great cocktails too and, again, with great staff.
Italian Restaurants
We aren’t fans of cheese, so this wasn’t the best trip in terms of food for us. The pasta restaurants we visited were a bit underwhelming compared to our expectations. Italy cook the pasta differently, so it’s a bit more rigid and slightly harder to bite in to. I prefer it to be softer, and even so, the pasta sauces weren’t anything special. We visited numerous places for pasta too, some being top rated on Google Maps, TripAdvisor and recommended on TikTok, but none stood out as good pasta for us unfortunately. The best food I had was actually a burger at the airport departing Rome. We didn’t try the pizzas though as we don’t like cheese, so maybe that would be better for other people. There were burger/steakhouse restaurants that I found on TikTok that we didn’t go to: Hamerica’s, T&C Burger Lab and Carpaccio The Beef Boys. One restaurant we did eat at was Ristorante Sant’Elena, but didn’t really live up to expectations. For desserts, we got the so-called best Tiramisu in town from Two Sizes. I can confirm it was very good, and I don’t really like tiramisu.
Summary
I would definitely recommend visiting Rome for around 3 nights I enjoyed my short trip there, however, was quite happy to go home at the end. However, I don’t think I’d go back as I feel like I’ve seen and completed everything I wanted to during my stay, and I don’t feel very enticed to return.
