Rome - Day 1

 Our Airbnb is pretty good. It’s nothing fancy but the layout is great with 4 beds and the location is perfect. Literally steps from the main subway line. Rome is so big, this makes getting around really easy

Old and teeny elevator with manual doors to our Airbnb. Takes 2 trips to take our family since there is a max of 4 people. 

Laundry setup in day 1

Laundry everywhere in day 2. We found an ironing board and step stool in a closet that we used for extra space. 

Clothes everywhere!

Anna’s room. 

Kitchen

Boys’ room

View

Trev and my bedroom

The wifi just will not load pictures. I will try in the train’s free wifi tomorrow morning to add the pics. Come back to this post tomorrow and hopefully it will have pictures. 

This morning we took the metro over to Vatican City. The metro was as packed as you could possibly get. Like people were crammed in. The full subway car would stop and people would just jam their way on. It was crazy. We were in it for about 20 minutes and it was intense. 

The first thing we did was St Peter’s Basilica. It’s hard to describe just how huge and fancy and beautiful it is in there. Just crazy!  We followed the Rick Steves tour and it was great. After we saw everything in the tour decided to climb the dome. First there’s an elevator that takes you up to a balcony overlooking the basilica. Great views. They cou climb up the dome to the top for views overlooking St Peter’s square and all of Rome. It’s a narrow climb and when you are in the dome, you need to sort of lean as you walk. It was really fun and everyone enjoyed it. 

Inside the atrium

Inside the basilica

There is an actual body of a pope behind glass. It’s very weird. 

This is a holy year which happens every 25 years. There are doors in the basilica that are only opened during the holy years. Many groups of pilgrims come and go through those doors. We saw many, many groups like this. 

Starting to climb the dome

View from the balcony

 Is

Now climbing the actual dome part

It looks like I took this picture crooked. But it is straight!  The walls are curved here because of the dome

Very narrow spiral staircase at this point. 

Views from the top

St Peter’s square from the top

Heading down

View of the dome partway down

From there we did a quick jaunt under the basilica in the crypts where many popes are buried.  St Peter  is also supposedly buried there. 

Under the crypts

Swiss guard of Vatican City

I had reserved a restaurant for lunch near the Vatican museum. I reserved restaurants whenever we were confident we’d be in an area at a certain time. For example we had reservations for the Vatican museum at 1:30pm so we knew we’d be in that area for lunch. This was great because I could look up Rick Steves recommended restaurants or trip advisor reviews and find something in our price range that looked good. Whenever we are just standing there looking for a place it’s a big time suck because we always look up reviews. I don’t want to end up in a crappy tourist trap when there is such great food around. 

T-shirt weather!  Sun was out!

One thing I’ve noticed is that it is really mostly Italian food. I saw one Chinese food place here and an Indian place popped up on the map today. But really it’s not very multicultural in the food area (or the people area to be honest. It’s like 99.5% white people here). 

After lunch we walked to the Vatican museum.  We did about 3/4 of the Rick Steves tour but we were all losing steam. So we skipped the last 1/4 to save energy for the Sistine Chapel. 

Honestly it’s a fantastic time to travel in Italy right now. The temperatures are fantastic and the crowds are low. We got a seat in the Sistine chapel and got to admire the art work with the Rick Steves guides without too many crowds. 

This statue is 2000 years old

Owen doing a Timelapse in this awesome hallway!

No photos allowed in the Sistine Chapel

Our feet were killing us and we were exhausted but we didn’t feel like we had done St Peter’s square justice. We had to run out to make it to the Vatican in time. So we did the 15 min walk all back, got a gelato and enjoyed the square. We also found our first Angels and Demons sight: the West Wind plaque!

Anna on the West Wind Angels and Demons site!

After that we were so tired. Joel wasn’t looking forward to metroing back. He was a bit traumatized by the morning. But it was less busy and not nearly as crazy. 

Although we all wanted a longer break to rest our feet, we only had about 45 minutes at the Airbnb before our next activity. Anna took a shove and we rested our feet and then we were off again. This time to an escape room we had booked. 

It’s really hard to tell how much to cram i to a day when you are booking. And it’s hard to know if St Peter’s is going to take you an hour and you’ll be waiting around bored before your afternoon Vatican reservation, or if it will be the opposite and it will take you 3 hours and you’ll be running. This was definitely a running day. I was regretting booking the escape room. But the kids were all in a good mood and seemed refreshed so we were off again!  

The escape room was only 2 subway stops away so it took us less than 10 minutes. As soon as we got there we could see it was elaborately themed. It was Harry Potter/fantastic beasts themed. The people running it were really friendly. We got j to the first part of the room and it was a pretty small area and we got through that area pretty quickly. We had to crawl through a little opening in the wall to get to the next room. And in there was a train station ticket booth and suddenly an actor popped out from behind the desk and I was not expecting that and I fully screamed!  We had a wand and a book of magic spells and we had to stun him and erase his memory in order to steal the key to get through. 😂 When we unlocked that passage way it took us down a slide through a tunnel  (seriously so fun!) into to a huge magical room that was so fun. We had to find ingredients to make a potion in a cauldron and we had to lower a  plant pot from the roof with a pulley and there was a magical mirror and when we broke the spell there was a magical creature behind it. They were hidden letters that you had to feel with your fingers in a dark cabinet for one combination. And there were puzzle pieces that we found all around the room that we had to put together. Very, very fun. And they were watching the whole time through hidden cameras and would give us little magical hints over the loud speaker to keep us moving. But all in keeping with the theme of the room. Then we got through that room and into another room where there was another actress playing a wild animal trapped in a cage that we had to free. There was another survivor-like ball maze game!  And we had to attract a niffler with some shiny objects. Eventually we freed the animal girl and we realized the code to get out of the room was written on her back but she was running around the room so fast that we couldn’t see it to make out the code. We had to consult our spell book and use a spell to stun her so we could see the code. And that’s how we escaped!

By far the best and most fun escape room we’ve ever done. the theming, the actors, the slide!  Just excellent!

From there i wanted to pick up some sort of takeout because I was tired but the kids were super energetic and wanted to go to a restaurant. I couldnt believe it. The escape room people recommended a place and the food was excellent. Still have t had a bad meal. None of us have got sick of pizza yet!

We are back at the room. It’s 9:45pm. Trev and I just spread the laundry out all around the Airbnb because we had packed it to tight in the drying rack that it was all still wet 24 hours later!  Finishing this and then it’s to sleep because we are on an early train to Pompeii tomorrow. We sure go hard in these trips! The kids are amazing travellers to put up with the pace we go at!!

23,392 steps!