Today was amazing, as my friend B and I arrived in Rome! It was a kinda Eat Pray Love kinda thing at first, as I was supposed to visit an Indian wedding this year too, but I decided to ask her to join me cause we had a good time in Bruges (and wayyy back in Berlin too, but that is a very different story, ha). So Rome it was. I had always wanted to visit Rome. Though I am not too much of a Euro-tripper, nor a huge fan of Italy, I had really enjoyed going to Sardinia two years ago, so I wanted to see why everybody was always so infatuated with Roma.

First of all I really love how Roma spelled backwards means love in Italian, that is so beautiful. It is also kinda ironic, as I think Rome is the most violent European capital imaginable. Especially today we realised that, walking through the Colosseum. First things first though: going there. As the boyfriend was sleeping over from Wednesday till Thursday, I was a bit worried my alcohol abuse and going to bed late would be a problem, but it wasn’t really. He even set his alarm for me at 5 o clock, which is very sweet.

As soon as the alarm went off, I cuddled him and I jumped out of bed, kissed the cats goodbye and stressed my way to (and through) Schiphol. It has been in the news for weeks how Schiphol is a mess right now, people have to wait to get their bags checked for many hours, even missing their flights. As the first train would arrive at Schiphol just before 6 and the flight left at 7.20, I was a bit too time aware. B is not the type of person to be early, so at 6.05 I started to get annoyed. Thankfully there she was, her fiance right behind her to kiss her goodbye.

That was super sweet, but I was a bit too time aware to really pay a lot of attention. Thankfully going through customs went by really fast and before we knew it we were eating a panini in the waiting hall. Yes it was a cheap flight, you do not just get to know your gate in advance, hihi. Which was fine, as soon as we saw our gate on the screen, we went down, waited a bit, went on board and then the real wait began. The plane had half an hour delay, which was fine cause we went on holiday so we did not really care. I can imagine people having connecting flights were not really in that same zone.

Anyway, after listening a shitload of music on the plane, cause I know my girl B, there was going to be a lot of talking these upcoming five days, we arrived at Roma Fufufu-something airport, which was underwhelming and small, but as soon as we went onto the train that took us to Termini station, we saw the beautiful Italian fields and some palm trees here and there: really pretty. Our hotel was right next to Roma Termini station, so after looking for a way too long time (thankfully Google Maps works, cause my phone data can be used all over Europe now, yay!), we arrived at Hotel Orlanda.

And I must say: it is not bad, not bad at all. It is definitely not luxurious, but the room is very spacious, it has a fridge, you can get free coffee in the hallway, there is semi okay wi-fi and it looks pretty clean. Awesome. Plus, there is 24 hour reception, which is great. We are right next to the reception, so I am pretty sure they can hear all our conversations, snoring et cetera. Thankfully we are not interested in doing other things in bed except for talking, sleeping and watching tv, haha.

After we had lunch, which was a caprese salad for me, cause I will eat those every day, LOVE them, we took a walk to the Colosseum. It was extremely hot, we were still on our Dutch walking instead of our Italian, so when we arrived at the Colosseum we were pretty knackered. We waited for 10 – 20 minutes to get tickets, from the normal ticket shop. That is actually quite difficult because in front of the Colosseum (and basically any type of tourist thing in Rome) there is a warzone of guys wanting to give you a tour, a ticket with discount, or give you the opportunity to skip the lines. Though they are always very charming, we kept yelling no until we ended up at the right cashier.

We took an audio tour which was only interesting when it came to explaining in general what the Colosseum was about, and which animals were hurt in the process, but it was very nice to see it from the inside, walk around on those stones that were there for many, many ages, and just enjoy the moment: being in Rome together, having a good time. The cutest thing was that I asked B before we went in: do you know what actually happened at the Colosseum, and she did not answer, but afterwards she admitted she kinda knew, but she did not know that there were so many exotic animals involved that even fought eachother. I am not too big when it comes to history myself, so it was good we took the tour.

After the Colosseum we needed a drink, so we went to The Base, which offered a nice selection of beer, awesome pineapple juice and a lava chocolate cake that I really needed. We sat inside for a while, getting cool enough to walk back to the hotel. So we did, and as we were both extremely tired from not sleeping for more than 3 hours the evening before, walking in the sun and just all these new experiences alltogether, we slept for a few hours. Lay-zay! It was nice though.

In the evening I looked up this supertiny restaurant called Fame, that was supposed to be amazing according to Tripadvisor. It was indeed very nice. A pretty long walk, but when we arrived I had these bitterbal-kinda things with lentils and brie cheese inside, and B had a hamburger that did not impress much, but it did come with freshly made crisps that were amaaaazing. It was very quiet at the restaurant, which seemed weird as the following days it was not bookable. Anyway, it was fine, we had a nice evening together before we walked back and bought some beer at the local supermarket, some ice cream as a dessert (and come on, we are in Rome!) and eventually went home to the hotelroom and drank some beer, ice tea and ate some snacks before going to sleep.