A trip to Italy was never really a possibility in my mind until one of my best friends, Amber chose to have a destination wedding near Rome!
Amber and I met in Colorado early 2019 and we connected quickly. We have been close ever since. Despite living in different states for most of our friendship, our connection has remained and I was excited to share her and her fiance’s love of travel for their wedding.
Throughout our stay, we explored the small town of Manziana. I witnessed the beautiful inconveniences of stores/restaurants being closed from 11-3pm while the town rested. I enjoyed the colorful buildings and ancient architecture, the farmer’s markets in the town center on the weekends and of course, the incredible food.
After a long day of travel from Colorado, we arrived in Manziana- a small town north of Rome. Our phones weren’t working, we hadn’t gotten any sleep, but we navigated the buses, trains and walk to our home for the weekend. I heard Amber’s laugh and we found our way through the street at midnight to be greeted enthusiastically (maybe drunkenly) by Amber, Nick and all of their friends.
After a good night’s rest, we spent our first day exploring the town, visiting a street market, meeting cats and relaxing at the villa. We ended up seeing the same cat every day, multiple times per day. He even attended the wedding looking for food. Everyone in our group gave him a different name.
We took a train just one stop to visit Bracciano Castle. It was built in the 1500’s and was used as military defense as well as a residence for many papal families. After the castle, we went back to Manziana for gelato while we sat in the park and waited for restaurants to open for dinner.
At the end of the day, we had our first true Italian meal. I realized I had misread the metrics for wine and accidentally ordered half a liter instead of one glass of wine which ended up being a happy surprise! We also had an amazing sorbetto drink for dessert.
Our time at the villa celebrating Nick and Amber went by too quickly. Here are some photos from the wedding and the days leading up to it, all taken by friends and Amber’s amazing photographer- Polina Bushkova.
After the wedding, we all took a train to the Rome area. We all got off at different stops to continue our travels.
These photos are from Michael and I’s first day in the Trastevere neighborhood just outside of Rome. We had the afternoon to explore while we waited to check into our apartment. We saw cats, graffiti, narrow alleyways that we often ended up going in circles around. The beautiful churches, Tiber river, tiny electric cars and detailed aspects of architecture all caught my eye. My love for people watching was easy to enjoy with the two large windows at our apartment.
Each day here, we walked around 3-5 miles. We made a trip to the Pantheon on this day. We planned one main activity each day to leave room for wandering and eating lots of food. We stopped in a few churches, alleys to see cats and the rooftop of our apartment to drink lemon spritz. We also met Nora and Carlo, some of my godfather’s friends who own a photography shop called Trevimage next to the Pantheon.
The abundance of graffiti was surprising to see. We learned that citizens of Rome used to occasionally made city complaints by writing them on public statues. I started seeing the graffiti here as an art form and enjoyed the statements made in words and pictures.
At the end of the day, we went on an evening food tour with a group. We ate traditional roman meals of pasta, bruschetta, artichoke, gelato and lots of wine. We got to see a wine cellar, meet new people and drink wine in the streets!
We had so many possibilities for sights to see and things to do without making much of an effort. This day, we walked up to Janiculum Hill in Trastevere to see the city views. I loved all the old growth trees and structures there.
Afterwards, we made our way to the Vatican. I was amazed by the details of the floor, the mosaics, the art, the volume of art, visitors and the size of all the rooms we saw. We had a fast paced visit due to the number of people there as well, but it was still incredible to see.
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When we got home that evening, we knew we had limited time left in our trip to see the Trevi Fountain. We had been watching the live cameras online to determine the least busy time to visit, which was actually never! haha
So after our long day, we went to a mini mart for drinks where the cashier opened our beers for us at the register. We relaxed for a few hours while waiting for crowds at the Trevi to simmer. We finally made our trek at 11:30pm. It was beautiful to see the city at night and have a different experience. We were lucky to find an electric scooter to take us home.
The next day, we went to Villa Borghese where we wandered around the enormous park before we saw more paintings and sculptures in the museum. There were a lot of famous Raphaelo paintings here. Afterwards, we had a rooftop dinner of scallops, pasta, wine and a dessert platter.
We also had another late night adventure to see the Spanish Steps that happened to be near the restaurant we had our dinner.
On our final full day in Rome, we slept in and went to lunch at a delicious gem of a restaurant in Trastevere. As usual, we were offered wine at 11:30am. After lunch, we made our way to the Colosseum and the Roman forum.
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Our final dinner was incredible. We had some unique cheese wrapped in guanciale or pork cheek, with wine and pasta with mushroom truffle.
Although we didn’t travel in a wide radius of Italy, we aimed to fully explore the areas we did spend time in. Being able to immerse ourselves in the Italian culture as much as we could made it a special trip that I’ll remember for a long time.
