Roaming the streets of Rome

Our last stop of our Europe trip was Rome, the capital of Italy. We arrived near midnight on 17th March and when we went to the hostel to check in (pre-booked online), we were told that they had mixed up our bookings and there were only one room available instead of two. Luckily the receptionist told us that he could give us an upgrade to an apartment which has two rooms - which of course we agreed! And we have free breakfast delivered to our doorstep too the next morning =D

Room service =D

After breakfast we walked around the city for a bit.....

Welcome to Rome.....

sunny day in Rome

We walked to Termini station in hopes of getting a free map of the city but it took us a while to find a tourist information centre....and we didn't manage to find any! Just then a guy from a tourist agency came to talk to us and somehow we just followed him and went on this hop-on-and-off bus tour.....

人山人海

colours of Italy

ruins 

Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II

We toured around on the bus and decided to hop off at Vatican City for pictures. There were so many tourists like us around, possibly due to the fact that the previous day was Italy's 150th anniversary of unification and it's a public holiday (shops closed?)....... 

at St Peter's Square with St Peter's Basilica in the background

the Apostolic Palace, official residence of the Pope

Time for lunch! Found this pizzeria restaurant called Zi Gaetana...food was just 'okay' for our taste buds.

Macaroni with carbonara - quite hard and very salty

tortellini in salsa

ordered a pizza to share

fettuccine ragout

After lunch we walked around and tried to find our way to the next destination....why so much walking, you ask, when we had already paid for the hop-on-and-off tour? That was because we didn't think of going back to the place where we hopped off the bus as it's quite far from where we had lunch....but good thing was that we managed to buy gelato.....true Italian gelato!

quite a long queue at Gelateria Old Bridge...apparently it's one of the famous gelateria in Rome!

with our gelato =D

we passed by this place so many times that we just had to take pic with it

VERY VERY long queue to get in the Vatican Museum, so we just took pics outside instead

From the Vatican Museum we walked around the streets and went to this bus stop that we were told we could hop on the bus from.....waited for around 20 minutes and when we saw the familiar green bus, we waved our hands to catch the driver's attention he didn't see us and hence didn't stop!!! And we crazily chased the bus to the next street but to no avail.....what did we pay 20 euros for, to chase the bus?! We grumbled along as we walked back to St Peter's Square.....however this time round we waited at the wrong bus stop (they changed the stop) and we missed the bus AGAIN!!!!

It took us quite a while to go to the right bus stop and hop on the bus.....and then hopped off at the Trevi Fountain.

nice view of Tiber River

the huge crowd surrounding the majestic Trevi Fountain

Trevi Fountain =D

After loads of pictures we made our way to the Colosseum (didn't want to wait for the bus any longer).

natural colours of sunset + rain coming soon

Just a few minutes after the picture was taken there was a heavy downpour!!! We tried to find cover under a stall with everyone else, then we decided to take the train back to our apartment. There were so many people at the station as well, waiting for the rain to stop. Before going back to our apartment we went to buy some drinks and snacks, then came out again to have dinner at La Vecchia Conca, a pizzeria restaurant. Surprisingly good food (best meal we had in Italy)!!!!

Roman spaghetti (just with cheese and pepper)

can't remember what is this called

spaghetti with....errr....

seafood antipasti....YUMMMMM

That concludes the end of our Europe trip.....it was a fun 10-day trip with Wei Ven and 2 new friends, Hao Keat and Lee Cil....they had been very helpful throughout the trip, for example with carrying my luggage, planning where to go and where to eat, buying tickets and taking public transport etc.....and my role in this trip was only as the main photographer following them around. Thanks guys for letting me join the trip, hope we will meet again =D