Hi Chaps,
This one's on travel, more specifically- European, city break style! My sister and I ventured for a 5 day trip to Roma and Firenze (Rome and Florence, duh), in aid of my impending 25th birthday. The moral of this post is not only to reflect on the beau sites of other cities, but also on travelling Ts and Cs and general 'lolz' that occurred along the way. Have a quick browse, it won't take up as much time as our time in transit did...
^ Above, Trevi Fountain and view from the stairs of Vittoria Emmanuel II Monument.
So, stop 1 was ROME. After quite a tough early start, arriving at the wilderness (London Liverpool Street) around 2.45am in a huge rush, following getting a bus in the wrong direction, we got a premature coach to Stansted. Two whoops to Uber and National Express for getting us to our 6am flight! Ryanair was a bit of a 'lol' with no front pocket, and leg room about as comfortable as a daddy long legs being origami'd into a matchbox.
Second lol was arriving at a hotel in the middle of nowhere, in the business district/highway area of Rome, which we soon discovered was about an hour trek to the city door to door. All in all, we managed a little evening and a full day of 'soaking it up' doing the main sites, eating ALL THE CARBS and getting semi-lost within tall urban stonework. GREAT. Trevi Fountain and gelato just off that square was a high light, along with bloody good hot chocolate 'cioccolata calda,' in most establishments we sampled. The Vatican city exploration took a good portion of a day and the interior was spectacular. I had visited Rome previously on a school trip when I was around 16, but this refresh was so worth it. I came out feeling humbled and in awe.
Weather stayed bright and fresh, but we grew irritable because the cold winter there was something awful compared to London. NO DEAL. OH also I broke 'Dry January,' because sometimes a fast-moving, 24/7 organisation-requiring trip says so... *throws dollar bills around like it aint a thang* SorryNotSorry.
Next up Florence- which might I add, is remarkably attractive, and much easier to get around than Rome! Everything is super central and there is more of a livelihood. Strips of activities can be seen here and central high streets, whereas we found Rome to be quite disparate and random in its urban organisation. Again COLD, so we were numb during site-seeing most the time, and we had food poisoning (day in a dark room not moving) for our full day there. Our experience of this destination was therefore was about half a day. We were scheduled to head to Pisa by coach for our flight that evening. REALLY recommend the cheap and fast coach trips (60 mins for 5-7.5 euros one way, via
Terravision or
Airport Express Bus) from Florence main station to Pisa airport. If we had planned better/not been ill, we would have seen the leaning tower before our return to London- triptych!
A highlight was the Duomo building at night- beauty in its dazzling pattern work! Secondly, this dessert/ice cream/coffee/muffin cafe place open late called 'AMALO,' located pretty centrally. Not sure whether to recommend the place we visited for dinner prior to the chucking up, but 'Osteria,' further out the city via bus, is a pretty quaint, authentic Italian eat for a dinner after 7pm. Arriving at 5pm is the wrong thing to do, because the area is pretty limp and nothing else opens until 7pm either so...WRAP UP KIDS and prepare to wait!
Oh and fancy Magnums just because...
Liv being a babe:
Top Tip: Don't book a value Groupon holiday without checking the hotel locations, the transfer possibilities, the flight locations, AND the times of transit. IT WILL make you hate your trip if you don't make your life as easy as possible...we had to laugh so much, otherwise we would have cried. The ratio of the trip was about 65:35, in transit to site seeing, respectively. Cry cry to carrying around 10kg hang luggage while you're at it... On reflection, I'd say best to do a longer stay in one location, and reside centrally, and DEFINITELY in higher temperatures than 1-4...
Also check your pizza orders contain BOTH cheese and tomato, because quite frequently we didn't, and ended up with either a BIG cheesy bread, or a BIG bruschetta.
Ps. Tourist tax WILL be applied to your room bill in hotel stays, as extra at the end of your stay. Take more mullah if you're doing it on a shoestring, because it can come and bite you cheekily in the balls when you check out. *BIG SMILE*
Anyway, it wasn't that bad, and pPs. Rome has Uber and Citymapper- the latter which we discovered when we arrived in Florence...obviously, so that should provide some peace of mind. The bus travel is also super cheap in both cities- max about 1euro50 a single journey, WOOP!
So ciao for now bellas! Happy tripping.
