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Rome.
What a place to spend 6 nonstop, social, action-packed nights.
It's crazy how fast I got used to the sheer amount of ancient and significant buildings there are here; you can't walk a block without seeing something historic. Rome is a city where ancient ruins exist in the open, unnoticed, next to corner shops and gas stations. Skateparks and playgrounds casually sit next to relics of the Roman empire. This juxtaposition was super cool to me, especially because if nondescript ruins like this existed in Boston, they'd be enclosed in glass with their own museum and a gift shop. Here they're just out in the open.
Obviously, there are more than just nondescript Roman walls here. The more historical and impressive sites have been protected and turned into tourist attractions. The Roman Forum, Circo Maximo, Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and basically everything around the historic center is ridiculously cool.
I spent my first couple of days just wandering this part of the city, I didn't even go inside any of the sites, as they're all pretty viewable from outside (and you have to book tickets weeks in advance). Rome is massive, with tons to see, from the historic center to Trastevere across the river to Borghese Park in the north; even with 6 nights I couldn't cover it all. There's really not much else to say except that Rome is definitely, 100% worth checking out.
The Roman Forum
Skatepark by the Colosseum
Shades of Rome
You may or may not know that 2025 is a Jubilee year. Well, now I guess you do. These only happen every 25 years, and are a time of extra religious significance in Christianity. In a Jubliee year, the 4 holy doors (the Porta Santas) open across the city, with one in each major basilica (St. John Lateran, St. Mary Major, St. Paul Outside the Walls, and St. Peter's).
Naturally, I set myself the goal of trying to walk through each one. It felt slightly like a collectible in a video game, and the ridiculously-impressive basilicas were scattered all across the city, so it gave me an excuse to explore a lot of Rome. Most European cities are lucky to have just one large, impressive cathedral; Rome puts them all to shame. Each time I walked through the holy doors and saw the basilica, I was left completely in awe that humans could build something like this back then.
In one very long day, I managed to visit all of the holy doors EXCEPT for the one at St. Peter's basilica in Vatican City - arguably the most important one. More on that later.
The interior of the Basilica of St. Paul Outside the Walls
One night, while watching the Roma vs Inter Milan game at a bar with a friend from the hostel, I learned about something called the Aventine Keyhole. It's literally a keyhole through a doorway which looks out at 3 countries at once (Vatican City, Malta in the distance, and of course Italy).
I had to check it out, so one day I went and waited in line for an hour, watching each group make their way up to the doorway, look through the keyhole once, and then pull out their phones and snap tons of pictures.
It's the same view each time, how many photos do you have to take?
When it was finally, finally my turn, I decided not to take a photo at all. It was pissing me off how slow the line moved, because everyone needed multiple perfect shots. There's a scene in the movie The Secret Life of Walter Mitty - which I highly recommend watching - where the photographer finally catches sight of the elusive snow leopard he'd been searching for. He'd been sitting there on the mountain for such a long time, with his camera set up, but when he finally catches sight of it, he doesn't take any pictures at all. He just sits and watches it, until it walks off out of sight.
"Beautiful things don't ask for attention," he says.
The view was cool - a row of hedges framing the dome of the Vatican - but was it really worth the long wait? Probably not.
However, that scene is now etched in my memory, because I purposely didn't take a picture of it. It sounds ironic, coming from a photographer, but in the modern age, where taking a photo is as easy as a simple tap on a screen, it's important not to overshoot. Too much focus on getting enough pictures can dilute the importance of memories and events.
The line to the Aventine Keyhole
So after spending a couple days wandering the city center, I wanted to take a day trip. I found a town sitting about 30 minutes from Rome on Lago Albano called Castel Gandolfo. At first, I thought it was actually a castle, but I guess that's just a deceiving name. It is a quaint medieval town sitting high up overlooking Rome - it felt a little like San Marino - and its claim to fame is a museum called the Palazzo Pontificio, devoted to stuff about popes. Amid countless paintings of popes and garments and such, I found an elegant hallway decorated with paintings of trees, which felt straight out of Rivendell, and it was my favorite spot in the museum.
Castel Gandolfo was pretty, and a good place to stop for lunch, but the real purpose of this day trip was to visit and walk a segment of the Via Appia Antica.
You know how they say all roads lead to Rome?
Well, the Appia Antica is THE road that leads to Rome. It's the most famous road in the city, apparently referred to as the "Queen of Roads", and was used to connect ancient Rome to southern Italy. From merchants to pilgrims to warriors, everyone would walk this road to enter the city, and today it sits beautifully preserved, passing through countless Roman ruins on its way to the city.
I wanted to be as traditional as possible, so my aim was to ride a Lime scooter along it, just how the Romans would've done it back then. Unfortunately, Lime thought of that, and deemed it a "no-ride" zone. Still, it was cool to walk on the same exact cobblestones that the Romans did over 2,000 years ago.
Palazzo Pontificio
Lago Albano
Via Appia Antica
A few weeks before arriving in Rome, I had booked tickets to the Vatican museum. You have to do this early, or else they'll all be gone (that's what happened with the Colosseum, and why I didn't go inside - but people say it's not worth it, and that it's better from outside, so I didn't mind missing it).
Anyways, the Vatican museum was spectacular. It probably beats the Louvre in my book for the best art museum I've ever been to. Where other museums have many different unconnected galleries, the Vatican museum has one designated path which takes you through everything. The museum had more than just famous paintings, with entire galleries devoted to marble head busts, corridors devoted to medieval pots or tapestries, and of course the Belvedere Torso. My favorite spot, though, was the Gallery of Maps, an ornate hallway full of old maps of Italy, the Roman Empire, and Europe.
The route finished at the Sistine Chapel, which I was super excited for. I'd heard so much about it, but had never even seen a picture of what it looked like. To be honest, I felt like a sardine in a can with the amount of people crammed together on its floor. It was super pretty, don't get me wrong, but the tourists did kind of kill the vibe a bit. Oh, and the famous Michelangelo fresco The Creation of Adam was so much smaller than I expected - but all of the walls and the whole ceiling are covered in other painted scenes, so it was definitely spectacular.
Man, I am so tired of tourists. While the Vatican museum was great, the single-route plan created a lot of "choke points," where massive tour groups would clog everything up. Tourist groups have been present in such abundance all over Rome, and I've grown fed up with constantly pushing through them. This is in October, supposedly the off season, so I can't imagine what Rome is like in its peak.
On the topic of hordes of tourists, be prepared for them if you want to see the Trevi Fountain during the day. I couldn't even get close when I walked by it originally, but we went back one night at about 5 in the morning to find it mostly empty. We could actually stand by the water and study it, rather than view it from a distance, obscured by tour groups, beggars, and street hecklers. So if you're willing to stay out that late, I'd suggest taking a mostly-tourist-free tour of Rome!
The exit of the Vatican Museum
Trevi Fountain (5 am)
The food here has been great, as expected, and throughout my trip I've been collecting recommendations from people about spots to check out. I couldn't get to all of them, but my favorite thing, by far, was "trapizzino". Basically, it's a street food pizza taco; pizza dough shaped into a triangular pocket shape stuffed with different fillings (almost like a mini Italian version of a Döner kebab). I ate a ton of these while I was here.
Overall, my time in Rome felt a little like my time in Barcelona. Going out almost every night, getting far too little sleep, and making new friends and connections; it has been so fun.
The sleeplessness peaked on my last night in the city, when I met up with a friend from Boston who was studying abroad at a Roman university. It was a crazy night that saw me get back to my hostel at 4:30 am, where all I wanted was to go to sleep.
I didn't do that.
Instead, I arrived just in time to meet up with a different friend and head over to the Vatican. You see, every Wednesday morning, the Pope gives an audience in front of St. Peter's basillica. In order to have any shot at getting into the square, you of course need to get in line a solid 3 hours early. That's what we did. I was dead tired, and after an agonizingly-long wait, the Pope finally came out.
It had started drizzling, which we weren't prepared for, and each time the Pope said something, it was repeated by about 10 translators into 10 different languages. It all combined to make it feel like forever, but finally, he blessed us all.
I got my selfie and I got blessed, so it was a success.
I had been planning to go into St. Peter's after this, since I had already waited in line to get into the square. However, there were so many people that it was impossible to get into the basilica; I felt like a salmon swimming upriver. Plus, I was practically falling asleep on my feet. So St. Peter's basilica sadly remained unseen; I guess it's a reason for me to return to Rome in the future! Except, of course, the holy door won't open again for 25 years, so that's how long I'll have to wait to complete the my task of walking through all 4 holy doors.
Selfie with the Pope
After the papal audience, I took a train to Napoli, where I spent a day resting and recovering. Rome was great, but personally I can't keep going at that pace for too long. Napoli was perfect to catch up on sleep.
The city of Napoli - or Naples - has its own unique character; it is gritty, but very much alive and interesting. Now that I've been across Italy, Rome feels like the baby of Florence and Napoli. In Florence, everything is picturesque, aesthetic, and fits together beautifully; in Napoli the streets are gritty, clustered, but have their own chaotic charm. Rome combines both of these aspects over a much larger area, with more extremes on each end. That's just an observation I had, I'm not picking any favorites.
The pizza lives up to the hype, though. I went to Pizzeria da Attilio, one of the most famous spots in the city, which came up on all of the "best pizza" lists online. I had to wait for 50 minutes for a seat, but it was definitely worth it. When you start comparing high-level pizzas, it can all get a bit marginal, but I truly think this is the best pizza I've ever had. I got a normal capricciosa, as well as their signature "star-shaped" pizza with ricotta in the points. Both were amazing.
Napoli
Pizzera da Attilio - 10/10
I didn't realize until I arrived, but sitting 30 minutes outside Napoli is the ancient city of Pompeii. To be honest, I hadn't thought about Pompeii since elementary school, when we watched that classic video that everyone sees, talking about the tragedy of the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Once I realized it was nearby, I figured I'd take a day to visit it.
They aren't exaggerating, it is literally an entire city preserved as a museum. Once, it was a vibrant Roman port and trading city, then it got covered in 20 feet of volcanic debris and the population was wiped out, and now it has been excavated and restored. I spent 2 hours here, wandering and getting lost in the alleys and once-shops of the city. It was rainy and gray when I went, which added to the melancholy vibe of the city; Mount Vesuvius in the distance looked ominous to me now, so I can't imagine how the Romans felt when it was erupting. Apparently, when the people died, their bodies left hollows in the volcanic ash which then hardened, perfectly preserving their remains. Seeing them on display was very creepy, but funnily, there were a lot of stray cats around Pompeii, and these seemed more interesting to many tourists than the petrified human corpses.
Pompeii
I think I was about 8 years old when I first saw an image of the Amalfi coast. Since then, the name has been stuck in my head, and it's one of the first travel locations I can remember putting onto my mental bucket list.
Napoli is the nearest large city to the Amalfi coast. My plan was to rent a Vespa and do a roadtrip along the coast, from Sorrento to Positano and then to the beach in Amalfi. Luckily, a friend I made in Rome was also coming to Napoli at the same time as me, and I managed to convince her to come along on my adventure. So on Friday, I got up early and met her at the train station, and we got on the train for Sorrento.
There was a slight hiccup in renting a Vespa, however. The first two rental shops we found in Sorrento said they wouldn't rent it to me because I didn't have an international license. Now, I was under the impression that a standard American drivers license would still be valid in Europe, but I was wrong. After the second rejection, it seemed like it wasn't going to happen, and we were contemplating renting normal bicycles. We decided to try one final spot across the road, and here the lady said she didn't care about my license, as long as the Vespa returned in good condition. She also told me that if I got pulled over, there would be a 450 euro fine. Well, we weren't about to turn back after coming all this way. Believe me, when I get back to Boston I'm going to apply for an international license, to avoid hiccups like this in the future. We got the Vespa, and off we went.
The steep cliffs of the Amalfi coast, dotted with colorful Italian houses, sit right over the sparkling aquamarine Mediterranean, and make this landscape one of the most beautiful place I've ever been; even in late October the weather was perfect, and the water wasn't even that cold! It was a truly scenic ride, and the only difficulty came when we got stuck behind the large tour buses, which had some trouble navigating the narrow, winding roads. I didn't get pulled over though, and the trip was a huge success.
I told myself in Paris, after making my first short film, that I'd try and do more video work. What better opportunity than riding a Vespa along the Amalfi Coast? Below is a short cinematic film I shot throughout the day; while I would've liked to exclusively use my Sony camera, it felt precarious taking it out on a moving Vespa, so some shots were done on my iPhone 13. Regardless, I'm happy with it, so here it is. Oh, and make sure to turn the quality to max, and the song is Sunny Side of Heaven by Fleetwood Mac.
This concludes my time in Italy, as well as - in my mind - the end of "phase 2" of my European trip.
Soon I'll be on a ferry to Croatia, where the adventures continue.
Stay tuned,
Mark
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