Itinery - Rome?

Question

I'm going to rome for 5 days

Are there any websites with pre-done itineries as suggestions for wise use of time?

Or does anyone else have any other suggestions? Books etc?

Somebody suggested 'The Lonely Planet'

Thanks!

Answer 1

I've been to Rome 5 times now, and the best book I've seen is "Key to Rome" by Vreeland.  It's a great book and is divided into historical sections then neighborhoods.  Includes the "must see" items as well as some little gems.  It also includes some walking itineraries and restaurant guides.  Enjoy your trip!

Answer 2

No-one will agree with this, but I would say with Rome - let the mood take you wherever you end up: many of the things worth seeing are within a fairly small walkable central area of the city. I'd just equip yourself with the 'Rome' Dorling Kindersley guide, and mooch about happily for 5 days. I wish I could do the same!! Have a great hol.

Answer 3

http://www.activitaly.it/inglese/itinera...

have a great time and good luck

Answer 4

Check out the link below.

Answer 5

I went to Rome for two weeks in January.  There are SEVERAL beautiful places to check out.  

WORD OF CAUTION FIRST THOUGH...  Lots of Gypsies are pick-pockets and other people - Carry a f***y pack at all times.  ALSO - YOU HAVE NO "RIGHT OF WAY" ON THE ROAD (even at marked cross walks) - Be very careful when crossing the street - You have to force yourself into the traffic!!

When I went I just bought a book on Rome...

I saw the Vatican & The Vatican Museum (Michaelangelo's "Pieta" is in the Vatican).  I also saw the cupola (the lookout at the top of the Vatican) and John Paul II - His crypt. (MUST SEE)

I went to the Colloseum & Colloseum Museum.  (MUST SEE)

I saw the Foro Romano & Arches of Constantine and Titus.

I saw two lovely churches "San Giovanni in Laterano" (which is the main basillica in Rome) and "Santa Maria Maggiore"

I saw the "Piazza did Spagna" (Spanish Steps) and "Piazza Venezia" (HIGHLY RECOMMEND BOTH).

I saw the "Piazza Navona".

I also took a day trip to THE TOWN OF TIVOLI (a MUST SEE).  Go see the "Villa D'Este" and if time permits "Villa Adriana" - There is also a "Villa Gregoriana" in Tivoli, but it was closed the day I went to Tivoli - The signs looked very lovely though!

I also took a day trip to see the SAN CALLISTO catacombs just outside Roma.

If you happen to go to Florence you have to go to the Galleria and see Michaelangelo's David.  ALSO - Take a side trip to "Pisa" from Florence to see the "leaning tower".

There were MANY OTHER places that I saw in Rome - but it is hard to remember!!

HAVE A NICE TRIP & ENJOY IT!! The Wine (from Frascati - a town not far from Rome is Famous for its wine), food, gelato (Italian Ice-cream), bread, yogurt and cheese is 1,000,000x better than anything in N.America!!

P.S. - If you like GOLD - Italy is the place to get it for high quality 18K and cheap!!

Answer 6

Here's what we did in Rome...

Italy is great. It’s fan-dabby-dozie, super-dooper, top-banana as the saying in our Kids club last summer went. Having “done” Milan, Florence, Verona and Pisa among others, it was time to head south, to Bella Roma. Rome has two airports, and we used the less-interesting of the two, Ciampino. Still, when you only pay 1 cent plus taxes for a flight, you can’t be picky. Both airports have shuttle busses and taxis available (typical fare 50 Euros one way to/from the city centre), so getting into town’s not a problem. Neither’s getting around once you’re there. Head to a metro station, and buy a B.I.G ticket. Less than 2 quid, and it gives you unlimited travel on busses, trams and the underground for 24 hours. Bargain. The guide books tell you not to use the Metro (Metropolitan Roma) because it’s more for getting people into the city than across it, but give it a go, especially if your hotel’s near a stop. Quicker than busses, and simpler to navigate, plus you ALWAYS know where you are because they announce it – none of that being glued to the window looking for something that looks Coliseum like so you know when to get off.

Rome has lots of things on offer. There’s

<> The Spanish steps - lovely and quiet in winter, not so in summer if the postcards are anything to go by, and decidedly un-Spanish looking. Climb to the top though. It’s good exercise and will leave you in dire need of a gelato which is no bad thing.

<> The National Pasta Museum – I eat pasta at least 6 days a week, so it seemed like a good idea to go here and see what they could tell me about the stuff. It’s down a back alley but nice and cheerful inside, with helpful staff. Learn how they used to make pasta using their feet in the good old days, and why sometimes you get spaghetti in strips, and sometimes curled round into nests. Just make sure you know how to use a Discman, because the “guided tours” come in the form of CDs, and you really need one to understand the displays.

<> The Trevi Fountain – throw in a coin, make a wish and you’re bound to come back to Rome one day, whether to not you want to…. This is one area that seemed really spoilt by the other people there, and for once it wasn’t the flocks of tourists that I wanted to slap. Nope it was those friggin’ street vendors wandering around selling those mouldable faces made from flour filled balloons. After an unfortunate incident in 1994 I never want to see one of those again but even my glariest glares couldn’t stop them shoving one under my nose every few moments.

<> The Vatican City – a whole other country, with its own postal system and everything. Go here to send you post cards, and they’ll get there months before any sent from Rome. While you’re there you may as well visit St Peters. Big church. Most bon. Full of Japanese tourists disobeying the “no photos” signs. If you go round the back you take a lift and then climb some stairs to the top. Only a few pounds, and well worth the view. Plus nice and empty. I’m beginning to think that rice and steamed fish isn’t such a healthy diet after all if those Japanese lot can’t muster the energy for a few hundred steps, whereas me with my chocolate pastries for breakfast? I made it just fine. From the top it looks like the Vatican museums are next to the church, but it’s just one of those optical illusion thingies. They’re a loooooooong way away. Round a corner, then another, along a street up a hill and you’re there. Through the revolving doors, up an escalator and along a corridor. You might think you managed to miss the ticket office (and wouldn’t that be a shame?) but you’d be wrong. If you’re a student here you need to go to the desk marked “students”. Everyone else can go to any of the others. Show your ticket to the nice man at the gate and you can go in.

Useful fact number 1: the Sistine chapel is only accessible through the Vatican Museums. Useful fact number 2: it seems like it’s a few miles from the entrance. You walk and walk and walk, ignoring all the treasures on the way, and get to the end of the building. Thinking you’ve missed it you turn back. You pop down to the loos a few minutes later and accidentally happen across it. It’s not signed, but it’s the only room teeming with tourists, so it must be the right one. Quite nice, so it is. Get out a guide book and have a little read as you sit on the benches round the edge. That’s the making of Adam over there, and at the end there’s the last judgment. On the way out, pop into the Café snack bar. Try the profiteroles, but leave enough room for lunch (you have to go in the morning because the whole place shuts around 2pm. You have been warned).

<> The Pantheon – Big building, hole in the ceiling. Not much to say, but it’s famous and free so go and visit it just for the sake of it.

<> Piazza Navona – this is just a square but it’s got lots of lovely fountains to walk around in the blazing sunshine. Honestly, it was February and I didn’t need a jacket. That’s my kind of country. If it’s lunchtime around now, go to one of the restaurants boarding the area. Try the one right at the end, opposite the Kodak shop. Great, cheap food and delicious waiters ;-)

<> The Coliseum –big, old, falling to bits. And yet they manage to charge a fortune for you to get in. Seriously, quite interesting especially now they’ve laid a path across the base and you can walk across it peering down at where they used to keep the wild animals. If you’re under 26 and an EU native (student or not) take your passport and get a discount. Ha, ha, ha, that’s one the Japanese lot can’t angle. Tickets also give you entry to the Forum – across the path and up a hill. Lots of roman remains to climb over / look at, and a few hills to clamber up for the view at the top. We spent a lovely 20 minutes just sitting there in the sunshine talking.

Across from the Coliseum, the opposite direction from the Forum you’ll find a small row of shops and restaurants. Go to the souvenir shop and buy postcards – the cheapest in the city at a mere 20 cents compared to the usual 50. Then go to the restaurant next door and try their pasta with butter and cheese. Less than a fiver for a huge portion and it’s sooooo yum.

<> EUR – south of the city, practically at the end of the metro line, this is the place to go to escape it all. From Eur Fermi station head past McDonalds (unless you’re starving, in which case pop in for an ice cream sundae, the *only* food I would ever touch in here) and take the next left. Walk and walk and walk and eventually you’ll come to the Museum of the history of Rome. Much more interesting than the name suggests, this is a great place to wile away a few hours. When you leave, head back to the Metro and walk down to the huge lake. This is the place to sit you mother down on a bench in the sunshine and demonstrate all the routines you’ve learnt in the dancing classes at the gym over the last 6 months. Who cares if people stare, they’ll never see you again.

Some random facts: the more tourist shops there are next to each other, the higher the prices will be. But, the more restaurants there are together, the less they’ll charge. Strange but true. And with all day opening hours you can eat in Rome all day long if you want, even in winter, so you’ll certainly not starve.

Try not to get to the point where you need the loo, because the toilets all over the city are disgusting. From the Vatican to the modern shopping centers, they were always flooded, never had paper and all seemed to have had their seats stolen. The Italian teenager’s version of, “steal a stop sign for kicks”, perhaps? Whatever it was, it was a pain in the derriere. The only place my tushy felt safe was in the comfort of out hotel bathrooms.

The ice cream is amazing, and not just the taste but the selection of flavours too. This is coming from a girl who spend years of holidays in Germany and Austria making lists of all the exotic choices they offered, so trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I had profiterole, vanilla-cream and Kinder Egg flavours among others, but my firm favourite was still good old Nutella. On Viale Ippocrate there’s the most amazing Gelateria ever. For roughly 1 pound I got a tub with 3 flavours topped with a mountain of cream and finished off a wafer. Certainly beats good old Mr Whippys on Blackpool sea front.

There are very few large supermarkets in the center thanks to a government initiative protecting small shops, but if you need one there’s a good branch just off Piazza Bologna. The place to go to find the Milka chocolate eggs demanded by your beloved sister, the cheese demanded by you high maintenance boss and the biscuits you need to take back for your colleagues to keep them happy and stop them bitching about your tan.

Surprising as it may sound, the train station is the place to be in Rome. At Termini busses, trains and the underground converge, and they cater extremely well for all the people these bring passing through. Restaurants from high class establishments to fast food joints are in abundance, as are cheap and cheerful Gelaterias. There’s even a shopping arcade below ground offering huge book shops, chemists and toy shops. You can buy lingerie from Etam (for some reason their version is a lot more like La Senza and a lot less like, well, ours), gets keys cut and stock up on your latest newspapers from around the world – 10 quid New York Times, anyone? The best place, though, has to be, and Sue Magee knows what’s coming here, the Lindt shop. Right in the center of the concourse, this was my personal haven from the madness outside. Lindt, Lindt and nothing but Lindt. There were hundreds of loose chocolates to pick and mix, and tons of boxed sets that would make great presents if you could bear to part with them.

There’s a shopping center down near the film studios called Cinecitta Due. Not quite up to Trafford Centre standards, but it did provide us with the opportunity to browse some non-touristy shops and mingle with people who, shock horror, had Italian as their mother tongue. Both here and in the center there’re branches of a department store chain called Coin which I’d recommend, especially their Lingerie department. They were having their end of season sales when we were there and had deliciously naughty plunging black lace bras on offer. Just in time for Valentines day :-)

If I have one complaint about the city (apart from the tourists, which you have to put up with seeing as, erm, yep, I was one of those too) it would be to do with the money situation. The Euro came into circulation over a year ago, but you’d never know it from the city. Wherever you go, you’re being asked for small change. Now fine, if something costs EUR 10.02 you might expect to be asked if you have those couple of cents, but when the total comes to something and 43 cents, or 78? There is a distinct shortage of coins in the city, and it’s very annoying. Remember the days of Spanish pesetas when some of the coins were worth fractions of pennies, and shopkeepers would ignore them when giving you the change, rounding up or down as they deemed suitable? Well that’s what’s happening here. It can work to your advantage if you’re, oh, young, female and scantily clad, but more often than not they will round in their favour. One transaction that really sticks in mind occurred at the airport. A German couple were trying to buy some duty free alcohol (not technically duty free since they were flying from one EU country to another, but low priced anyway) and they ended up having to leave without it because they only had a 50 EUR note (just over 30 GBP) and the guy on the till didn’t want to hand over the change which you could blatantly see inside. Maybe he didn’t want their custom, but this seems like a very odd way to do business, or not do business as the case may be.

So that was my Rome. We had 3 days which in some ways seemed too long and in others not long enough. We saw a lot, but by no means everything. We could have seen more if I hadn’t insisted we take the time to shop, but this was something I really wanted to do. You can forget where you are if you’re not careful, and get swept away with the tourists, but take the time to stroll down a proper “Italian” street with the locals and you’ll soon remember. Rome is the eternal city. Perfect whenever you go (and definitely a city you can visit in Winter without freezing your bits off) but make that trip sooner rather than later. Its popularity is only going to continue rising, and with that the number of tourists.

Answer 7

Try to time your visit for the end of the month. The vatican is free on the last sunday of the month!