Day One and Two in Rome, Italy

In December, Adam and I traveled to Europe with the Marlexes. We spent most of the month touring Italy and ten days exploring other parts of Europe via cruise as well—which I highly recommend! 

Europe is AMAZING. Everything is SO old and big and charming. It stopped me in my tracks quite often. There is NOTHING like it in the states. I took over 5,000 photos so it'll take me a while to get through them all—what fun!

The Swiss Guard in St. Peter's Square, Rome, Italy

We flew Turkish Airlines (a cheaper option because of a layover in Turkey) and the service was excellent. Their meals are nothing to complain about and each passenger received a blanket and little pouch with slippers, eye cover, tooth brush and socks.

The flight to Turkey was about 18 hours, and after a short layover, it was only three more hours to Rome.

We rode the train from the airport into Rome. Italy stinks by-the-way. And it's surprising how many people smoke, you can't get away from the smell. We considered ourselves lucky if we could eat al fresco without someone lighting up. (But eating al fresco is the ONLY way to go in Italy, no matter what.)

There are pick-pockets in the city, many of them lurking around the train station. We had a couple, male and female, following us to our hotel and the woman had her hand in my backpack when Adam spotted her. Thankfully, I had packed to make it difficult for anyone with sticky fingers to find anything of value and nothing was taken.

We spent a few hours that first night exploring the city in the dark and over the next two days we went back to see the sights in the daylight plus more!

Rome Slideshow

Below is a slideshow with very short explanations of the locations. (This was an experiment that should have been done differently but I simply can't spend any more time to finesse. LOL.)

View in YouTube—the quality is much better.

(https://youtu.be/dXQ1wZg2PKM no descriptions.)