Rome

Day 1 of Italy trip 2019

Today was long. And technically, today started yesterday. John and I have both been awake now for 32 hours with only a short one-hour nap on the 9 hour flight. But, outside of our delusional sleep deprived state, we have no complaints. 🙂

The trip started off on a good foot when we successfully tracked down vegan pizza at & Pizza in the airport before take off. We had a nice, roomy flight with free vodka for two (but really just for Amanda), and a complimentary vegan meal on the flight that was actually quite delicious.

After getting our rental car we were off to experience driving in Italy for the first time and boy was it fun. We pulled over multiple times to quadruple check that we were on the correct roads and that we weren’t going to accidentally get a ticket for entering the ZTL.

We eventually made it safely to our first AirBnb where our host greeted us with her cat, turtle, chickens, and Italian coffee. After chatting with her for a bit, we headed out to Rome, taking a short metro ride to the city center. First up, the Colosseum.

It was HOT but we walked around for a few hours to check out some of the popular tourist attractions including the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain. And we may or may not have taken coins out of the fountain to make a wish.

There were only a few things that saved us from the heat-the running water fountains that we happened upon throughout the city, and the huge cup of fresh watermelon we bought that brought us a special pigeon friend, Roman. We fed him a few watermelon seeds and he quickly decided that it would be best if he sat on us to encourage us to give him more treats. Friendliest pigeon ever.

We also saw these things:

After seeing some beautiful sites, we headed to a spot called Romeow Cat Bistrot where we enjoyed some fresh juice in the company of some friendly felines. Then, we grabbed some dinner at 100% Bio. They had a super fun assortment of vegan dishes and you could have as much or little of each as you wanted And, of course we needed some gelato to finish off the night so we went to Gelateria Brivido where they had an amazing selection of vegan gelato. John had a peanut butter flavor and a Nutella flavor topped with whipped topping and I had a chocolate flavor and a coffee flavor.

And finally, it was time to head home. We figured out the public bus situation somehow and came home for the night-on the most crowded bus in the whole world. Now it’s off to sleep to rest up for another day ahead in Italy.