34 Hours in Rome & 5 Rainy Days in Sicily

Italy and Rome has been on my bucket list for a long time and finally, now we decided to go.

Me, Birna, Eirikur and Marget went to Italy during the autumn scoolbreak. Destination was Taormina on Sicily with short stop in Rome.

We arrived in Rome late evening and at the hotel around midnight. It was a very good small hotel located centrally, by the riverbed of Tiber, in the Vatican´s backyard.

This was our first time in Rome and I wanted to use the time efficiently, woke up before 6 o’clock the morning after and sneaked out with my camera gear, trying not to wake up the others.

It was a beautiful and peaceful morning, the sun was not up yet and I had a very nice walk around the neighbourhood. I walked by the Tiber and I found some good spots to take photos from.

The Vatican seen from Ponte Sant'Angelo

Sant'Angelo Catle

Basilica di San Pietro

Sant'Angelo

I came back to the hotel couple of hours later with coffee, juice and crossiants, not remembering that none of the others in family liked croissants.

The rest of the family woke up when I came in and we prepared for a long day wandering around the city. We started by having breakfast in a small cosy restaurant not too far away, in the Navona area. The kids ordered breakfast with ham&cheese sandwich not realizing that Italian ham is in fact the uncooked dried ham that Eirikur actually likes but they didn’t like it in a warm ham&chease sandwitch.

We went further, started at Piazza Navora, explored among others the Pantheon, Fontana Di Trevi, Colosseum and Forum.

Trevi Fountain

We walked a long distence but used the Hopp-on Hopp-off bus as well.

The last hopp-off from the bus was at the Vatican where we joined an extremely long queue that actually didn’t take that long. When entering the Vatican, Birna was kindly told that she was inappropriately dressed and was not allowed to enter the St Peters church. The guard kindly directed us to the souvinir shop where she bought a big scarf to put around her waist in order to cover her legs. She and Eirikur were the last customers before closingtime, served by a kind nun who was so charmed by Eirkur that she gave him a bracelet.

The Vatican is a beautiful place where we would have liked to spend much more time.

The Vatican at Sunset

After the Vatican we had a short stop at the hotel. We asked our good friend Google for advice and found a good restaurant in the neighbourhood. We realized that we are not the only friends of Google and we joined a long queue. After some time in the queue, when getting closer to the entrance, a waiter came and offered drinks “on the house”, a very nice guy, until he noticed that Eirikur wore a Juventus uniform and told him that he unfortunately could not enter the restaurant dressed like that. Eirikur realized that he was joking but also understood it was close to blasphemy to wear Juventus uniform in Rome. We had a very nice dinner, worth waiting in a queue and Eirikur tried his best to cover the Juventus t-shirt.

The morning after I woke up even earlier and sneaked out again. This time I wanted to be at the Colosseum before sunrise. It is very different to walk around a busy city in the middle of the night, when most of the people are home sleeping. I arrived at the Colosseum in good time before sunrise and I was alone there, different from when we were there the day before together with thousands of tourists.

Altar of the Fatherland / Altare della Patria

Colosseum before sunrise

Arch of Constantine

Colosseum again

I spent some time there and moved to a spot close by with good view over Forum where I shot some photos as well, before heading to the hotel again.It was time to wake up the others, pack and continue our journey to Sicily.

Forum at sunrise

Rome is definitely city that I recommend everyone to visit but staying only one day is not at all recomended.

I will go back one day but that will not be for one day only.

5 Rainy Days in Sicily

For the days we spent in Sicily. We landed in Catania in fantastic weather around 1400 and we were excited to spend few days enjoy in sun and sea on an historical island.

We were not the only tourists arriving and we spent more than two hours waiting in queue for our rental car.

It was already dark when we found our cosy little hotel up in the hills in Taormina.

After setling in our apartment we were not in mood for going out so we ordered pizza. While we waited the kids went through the bocures that was on the counter table and carefully made a plan for the coming days.

Day 1: Scuba diving, beach

Day 2: Horseriding to Etna

Day 3: Rent a boat for the day

Day 4: some other stuff at tha beach

It looked like we sould not have time for visiting all the historical places me and Birna was interrested in.

To cut a long story short; it rained more during the 5 days we spent there than in an average year. Roads were closed due to landslides. Me and Eirikur spant a lot of time outside, under roof, playing pingpong, snoker and dart.

Taormina