Roma

For our third anniversary we decided to stoke our love of history and Italian food with a trip to the Italian capital!

Getting evermore confident this is the first trip I booked and organised everything myself - no travel agents.

When searching for flights we found it was cheaper for us to drive to Heathrow, stay there over night and fly from Heathrow than it was to fly from our local airport Bristol so that's what we did and booked our flights with Alitalia.

The night before we stayed in our favourite Heathrow airport - the Sheraton Skyline

Do you see the time of those alarms!!! The downside to the cheap was that we had a shockingly early flight on 14th Jan. On arrival we had arranged a coach drop off to the main train station from which it was a short walk to Hotel Raffaello

It certainly wasn't a top of the range hotel but it certainly did all we needed - comfy bed, clean room and en suite and a great breakfast - we weren't here for the room!

After checking in and dumping our stuff in our room we decided to head out for a little wander.

We went to a restaurant near il Vittoriano which looked fine from the outside. It wasn't until we had ordered we realised they were just heating meals in the microwave. We didn't make that mistake again!

Due to the early start we decided we didn't want to have a late night so slowly meandered back to our hotel. Very close to the hotel was a pizza place which we stopped for a slice and some beer - much better quality and much lower price!

The next day we had a reasonably early start as we were going to visit the Colosseum

After which we explored palantine Hill

And the Roman Forum

From there we headed into the city and decided to see inside Il Vittoriano

and the Pantheon

We decided to have dinner in the square that night. It wasn't cheap due to the location but it was good!! and there was a great atmosphere

These photos surprise me we ordered a bottle of white wine, that's our third favourite!

We took a long walk back to the hotel

Basically going back the way we had come to see the sights by night.

Our anniversary we had booked a tour to see the Vatican and The four major Papal Basilicas of Rome

We started in he Vatican.

then St Peters Basilica

We then left our guide and found a spot for lunch before meeting our second guide where we travelled to St Paul Outside the Walls, Arch Basilica St John Lateran and Basilica St Mary Major. Unfortunately I do not know which photo is which so below is a selection from all of the basilicas.

This tour took all day but luckily finished at St Marys Basilica which was near our hotel so rather than catching the mini bus back to a central location we walked back. We were a little tight on time as we had a 7pm dinner reservation so we quickly showered and changed and headed out.

When planning this trip I wanted to book something special. I went onto trip advisor and found Ad Hoc https://www.ristoranteadhoc.com/en/. We chose to order 4 course meals which came with wine pairings

Carl had the Roman menu which looked a little like this

I had the land tasting menu

We do not claim to be foodies - Carl certainly isn't! but we thoroughly enjoyed this meal!! I would highly recommend it.

The following day we walked around and went back to he Vatican to go up the tower in drier weather. Then did a Catacombs tour finishing our evening back at the Vatican to see it lit up at night.

on the 18th was our final day. We had no plans, nothing was booked and we had seen all we had wanted to so we were able to enjoy a leisurely day.

The result was one of my favourite ever afternoons!

We strolled around - had half an idea of doing a self guided angels and demons tour but our first stop was shut. so we just strolled around and did a little shopping before finding ourselves in the square at the Pantheon. As it was after lunch we decided to sit down for a while and ordered a bottle of wine and just people watched. The first game we played was trying to guess everyones nationalities before moving onto their jobs

the sun was setting and we were enjoying ourselves and stayed sharing more than one bottle of wine. After a few hours we headed out to a nearby square Carl wanted to see

Before ending up back at the Pantheon. Our waiter from earlier noticed us and asked same again, go on then

We had something to eat here and more wine and just soaked up our final day talking about the holiday talking about future trips and the house we were in the process of buying. After a while we decided it was time to head back to the hotel. On the way back we went to the local pizzeria (The one we visited on our first night) and bought some pizza and I bought a can of coke to soak up the alcohol. Carl made himself a cup of tea from the machine in the hotel lobby then we went to enjoy our midnight feast in our room. Well... one of us did... one of us was sensible and no matter how tired they were they forced themself to stay awake and eat the pizza and drink the coke before going to sleep. The other one fell asleep almost as soon as he touched the bed. As a result I was fine the following day. Carl very much was not! check out was midday and he was still very fragile I thought we might not get out. We had a 1:30 reservation at Hard Rock I hoped the fresh air would help him so we walked over. I had a delicious meal but Carl couldn't stomach a thing. To make matters worse Hard Rocks toilets were out of order and we had to use the posh hotel next door.

We got his meal to go and he had it later at the airport. As it was a late flight we stayed at the Premier inn Heathrow before driving home on the 19th.

To this day Rome is still my favourite city we have visited in Europe - Carls is due to come later this year ;-)