When In Rome

June 2017 marked one of my favourite holidays/memories to date. I am something of a seasoned traveller (har har), having visited Paris and Berlin twice in the last couple years, as well as Amsterdam and various other towns and cities through Europe. However, they were all done with my parents and brother in the motorhome which was I was starting to feel a little too cool-- I mean old for. In June of last year, I took a big step. Flying to Rome, Italy without my parents and with my boyfriend of eighteen months, Johnny. Much, much cooler.

We flew from Edinburgh Airport and got into Leonardo da Vinci–Fiumicino Airport in the early afternoon. It was further out from the city that I expected (and very close to the coast) but a simple train ride got is into the city centre without much hassle. Our apartment, an 'artist loft' that we were renting off Airbnb, was a short walk from the train station and perfectly situated for our holiday. On the first night while on the search for pizza and ice cream, we ran into the Roma Pride Parade which lead us directly to the Colosseum. It was the most perfect introduction to the city; celebrating under the evening sun and the might of Rome's most famous attractions.

Unsurprisingly, Rome is hot in June (who knew?) and I did my fair bit of complaining as it reached over thirty-five degrees at midday, every day. This, however, was a perfect excuse to stop at almost every ice cream shop we passed to get our new favourite; lemon sorbet. We have tried our best to find an equivalent at home, but much like the Italian pizza, we've had no such luck. We had some must-see locations, like the Colosseum and Vatican city and I would highly recommend getting the city pass. It was about a hundred euros each but so worth it, getting you in free to your first city attraction and discounted everywhere else, plus it also covered all city transportation.

We had an underground stop directly across from our apartment entrance, but we also did our fair bit of walking. According to my walking app, we were doing over ten thousand steps a day the whole week were there, which is pretty impressive since I usually don't even hit two thousand while at home. We found a lot of what we were wanting to see was walking distance away from each other, or a couple of underground stops and then some walking. We actually ended up bumping into a lot of tourist spots by accident. I'd also recommend the Lonely Planet Guides App. You can get most cities on it and it was great for restaurant/museum/tourist attraction recommendations.

During the week, we 100% made up for the amount of walking we did with the amount of food we ate. For most meals we ate out, only occasionally getting lunch food and one dinner from the local supermarket for us to make at home. Pizza and pasta were high on our priority list in Rome. However it was sod's law that we found our favourite place, and only a stone's throw from our apartment, on our last night in the city, in which we pretended we were going to share a dessert and then had to order another one because it was so damn good.

I don't know if this is a bit of a cop-out, but one of my favourite parts was getting a Burger King on the way back to our apartment one night. I know what you're thinking, the whole of Rome and your best bit was a Burger King? But no. While the Chicken Royale was as good if not better than back home, it was the feeling of being at home in a city far away from my own cosy bedroom in Scotland. We had spent the whole day walking around the Vatican, drinking in the culture, burning in the sun and generally doing way too much walking for my little legs. It was late, we were heading for the last underground back to our apartment and strolling hand in hand down the Italian streets we found a Burger King to get some late night nosh. It was my 'everything is okay' moment after travel and being away from home always causing me so much anxiety for so long. I can look back at that moment and think, I can do it because I have done it before.

Not to downplay the Colosseum and Vatican city though, which were pretty great too.