My Roman Holiday

I spent a week in Italy in the colder month of March this year. The idea was to avoid the hot summers but more than that to avoid the peak tourist tarific and the long queues at key attractions. I had been to Paris and London last year during peak season and waiting in the long queues had really tired me out! Plus I ended up spending lot of money on special tickets, wherever there was an option, to skip the queue. So I planned this trip on purpose during the colder low season.

Day 1

Since we were flying economy and had a long (6 hour) layover at Dubai, we had kept the fist day light. We checked in around 10 am (thanks to my rewards status and low season we were able to check in early) and after a short workout, to wake up my jet lagged body, we headed towards Piazza Spagna and Spanish Steps.

I had selected our hotel in such a way that all key attractions of Rome were within 2-3 km distance from the hotel. In addition, nearest metro station was just a half a mile away and Rome Termini was just over a mile. Location wise we got really lucky!

Since we were hungry we first stopped at a small local cafe for lunch where we had one of the best lunches of our vacation. After that we continued our walk to the Piazza Spagna. It was a nice sunny afternoon and the Piazza & Spanish steps were fairly crowded - guess, there never is an off season in Rome :)

There isn't much to do here except sit on the steps and watch the world go by. Since weather was cold and sunny at the same time, it felt amazing.

Then we walked to the Trevi Fountain which unfortunately was under renovation. Renovation is the key problem while visiting attractions in low season. We decided to uplift our mood by having gelato - that ended up becoming a daily affair for us. The different flavours and amazing colours have made gelato my new favourite pick me up!

We tried Kiwi, Tiramisu and Coffee on day one at a small gelataria just next to Trevi fountain and all the flavours were simply amazing.

We were beginning to feel tired so we headed back to our hotel, on the way we stopped at a wine shop and picked up couple of local wines - a Cabernet and a Syrrah. Back at the hotel, we soon dozed off and woke up in the evening, just long enough to get a short dinner at a small café near by.





Trevi Fountain - without water :(

Spanish Steps

Piazza Spagna