It took forever to get my sister to get a damn passport. In 2013 when I was sent to the UK because my boss didn’t have a passport I extended my trip and spent 3 days in Rome. I went back to Europe on various work trips in 2014 and 15, and I’d always tell my sister “get a passport so you can come with me next time!”
Long story short, she finally got one, we went on a group trip to Jamaica in 16 and decided that this year would be #sisytrip17! The spelling is intentional y’all…
So, I think I’ve mentioned to y’all before that I hate planning vacations more than like 2-3 months in advance. Long story short, I booked this shit through United Vacations (which is amazing because they’re the only site I’ve found that let me book multiple destinations with hotels) like 8 days before we actually left.
So, we’ve both got pretty terrible flight anxiety, and this is the first time my poor sister has ever been on a flight this long. I give her the pep talk: ‘the bigger the plane the smoother the ride’, ‘there is free booze, ‘the food is good’, ‘take a xanex and a half’. But as all of you sophisticated readers know, anxiety at it’s core is irrational fear, so that shit only half works.
Anyway, So I booked our flight from Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany on Lufthansa (which is probably one of THE best airlines ever, when it comes to service and experience.) I also selected seats in a way that will, on a flight thats not sold out, usually ensure we’ve got an empty middle seat. I sat her in the window and myself in the aisle, and voila! Empty middle seat. Just when we’re all done high fiving each other and sneaking shots of the tequila Jasmine has brought on board in little shampoo bottles, a couple sits down in the bulkhead row right in front of us, with what….a fuckin’ baby.
This isn’t just your run of the mill baby, cute, cooing, drooling and eating soggy cheerios…noooo this is an active baby, she is all peeking at us through the seats and trying to join us in our row that clearly has no room for her. We knew before we even took off that this was going to be a long 8 hours. The damn baby cried pretty much the whole time, and even through my noise cancelling beats, I was awaken by her when my songs changed…whatever, we were sleepy as hell when we landed in Rome.
So, I found that Expedia is now offering (or maybe has been offering) airport transit. So I booked a shared ride from the airport to the hotel, which was a great experience. We stayed at the Best Western Spring house which was interesting to say the least. The last time I was in Rome I stayed at a BW that was surprisingly luxurious. Maybe because this one is literally right behind the Vatican, proximity = luxury.
I asked my friend Luca, who is a Rome native, for some local restaurant recommendations. Jas and I took a nap, and then got up and hit the streets in search of this restaurant called Giacomelli which was about a 15 minute walk away. The food was great! Jas had her first real Italian margherita pizza (which she loved) and I had a prosciutto pizza (that I loved). We of course washed it down with house wine, which if you’ve ever been to Italy, house wine is like fancy bottled wine in the US (my opinion) and its cheap. I pretty much got a whole bottle of wine for 4 euros, and there was no annoying guy to uncork the bottle and present it to me like its a baby, and then wait for me to swish it around in my mouth before filling my glass, seriously why do we even do that? They put that shit in a clear cork-free glass bottle for your rapid enjoyment.
We finished our meal and took an uber over to the Trevi fountain. Here’s the thing about Uber in Rome…its more like a limo service, so the 4 mile ride from the restaurant to the fountain was like 22 euros or something like that. Its way more expensive than USA Uber–just an fyi.
The Trevi Fountain is amazing! First of all its damn huge, way too big for such a small space but they’ve made it work. Jas bought a selfie stick so we could take this picture:
The damn selfie stick broke literally after this photo, and I was just kind of standing there like “oh no” and then I look up and Jasmine has found the selfie stick dealer and after telling him his product was weak, he gave her another one. So I’m looking around, and it just so happens that behind the African dudes selling plates that pop up into bowls (AKA shit nobody wants) there is a Gelateria! Alright sister, its time for your first gelato…it was great we smiled a lot then took a cab back to the hotel.
Let me reiterate that I am so super last-minute when it comes to trips and activities, so the night before we left Chicago, I was on the internet trying to find a good guided tour of the Vatican, Museum and Sistine Chapel. I ended up booking one of the Dark Rome Tours through City Wonders, and I’m so glad I did. It was a little pricey, I think 60 Euros per person, but so worth it if you’re a history nerd like myself. A local history nerd, spends three hours with you and a group of about 8 other people guiding you through the entire place and finally ending in the sanctuary of the Vatican. I thought the Vatican was amazing to the first time, but even it’s more captivating a second time. We were the youngest people in our tour by at least 30 years, and all these old white americans kept calling me ‘sir’ or ‘young man’ but everybody was nice so I guess its okay, right?
So we’re taking a break on the stairs after the tour, and this group of kids comes and sits literally right next to us. There is probably 750 square feet of empty damn stair space and you sit your dumb ass right next to us?! I guess we’re leaving now. Ugh.
On the bright side, a lovely man stopped us and gave us a discount on hop on hop off bus tickets. So, we hopped on and went to the Colosseum, which is totally worth seeing, but I swear it’s boring as shit. Just take a picture of the outside and go on with your life. Not to mention the stairs are steep as hell and the whole thing looks like its going to spontaneously crumble at any moment.
We rode the bus for a while, so we could 1: sit the hell down and 2: get a nice tour of the city, it was nice enough outside to sit up top in the open air section so the views were great. After the bus we found a restaurant not too far from the vatican and grabbed dinner (and of course more wine). Food was also good at this place, I believe it was the Pizzeria Ponte Vittorio.
Now I don’t know if Jasmine has coach bus induced narcolepsy, but this mofo went to sleep every time we got on the hop on hop off bus (in both Rome and Paris). I did take a nap on the Rome bus myself though.
At this point we’re beat, and we’ve got a 9am flight to Paris in the morning, so we go back to the hotel hoping to get some more wine, but the bar was closed, so we cut our losses and went to bed.
We ended up taking an uber to the airport due to an issue with the airport shuttle. It was about 50 euros from our hotel near the vatican to the airport (do better than me and arrange airport transit in plenty of time).
Our flight from Rome to Paris was via Swiss Airlines. I could tell when I was on their site checking us in the night before that they seemed to be the Spirit or Frontier of Europe. Something about checked bags being 100 euros at the check-in counter,and carry on bags had to be a certain size. Now, we both packed in American sized carry on bags and I damn sure wasn’t about to pay 100 bucks to check my damn bag. So I said to Jas “look, we’re gonna go straight to security with our mobile boarding passes and just board the plane like normal. If no one stops us, then we don’t pay to check these bags” And no one stopped us, we did have to gate check our bags at our connection in Zurich but that was free and then we high fived some more.
I don’t remember anything about those flights, I was knocked out the whole time.
We’ve arrived in Paris…
"We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us." -Anonymous 