If you could travel to a destination of your dreams where would it be!? The house of Mels always imagined going to Europe one day... more specifically Mrs. Mel here imagined traveling to Paris - but we have yet to visit there so cest la vie.. but we did however, get to travel to a place just a beautiful - Rome, Italy!
Let me take you all to how it began. As usual Melvin and I began thinking... what would be our trip this year.. we had loads of ideas of where we’d like to go - Cabo, Puerto Vallarta, Los Angeles...were just a few of the places that made our list. The thing about us is, we are not going to be the ones to break the bank to travel. So to do that, we love using CostcoTravel to help us find amazing vacations for an affordable price & had decided to settle on LA for various reasons including that we just loved the west coast, we had some close friends who lived in LA and our visit to San Diego two year prior was just so memorable - you can read more about that trip here.
Now... if you know anything about me at all.. I love to research and find other vacation possibilities at an affordable price if I can do so!! So you can guess what i started doing!!?? I started researching other places that we might be able to travel to that was coming up in the same price range as the LA trip & that’s when I found it... a trip to Rome Italy for the same price as booking the trip to LA - flight, hotel and transportation all included!!!!! YES you heard that right I found an 8 day trip to Rome, Italy for the same price that it was going to cost us to travel to LA, rent an Airbnb and rent a car for the entire week!
About our stay
Flight:
We flew into Rome at the Fiumincino airport after having our connecting flight from Orlando to Detroit. Of course we flew with Delta as we tend to fly with only two specific airlines when traveling and more specifically we choose delta for our longer - international flights. Both flights were smoothe and we were given generous amounts of snacks on our connecting flight, as well as meals and drinks on the longer leg.
When flying international if you are over the age of 21, you are able to be served alcohol free of charge. Additionally, you are served several meals depending on your time of departure.
Transportation:
When we arrived in Italy after going through customs and getting our baggage, we went to the pick up area for chauffeur service. The travel package we booked included transpiration from/to the airport directly to our hotel. Our chauffeur Philip guided us to his car and drove us through the beautiful Roman cities to our hotel.
Other than the services to and from the hotel, we took public transportation. Rome is big on their train and bus system and when we weren’t taking public transit we walked! Great way to get your exercise and steps in ladies!!
Hotel:
We stayed at the Hotel Ariston. Like I mentioned before we booked the hotel along with the flight and other details of the trip. The hotel provided a breakfast daily and it was an assortment of English style and Italian style breakfast and of course authentic fresh Italian coffee everyday! I was in the coffee lovers heaven - cappuccino, espresso, lattes you name it I had it!
THINGS TO DO IN ROME ITALY
There are so many things to see and do in Rome - from going to the historic monuments (like the Vatican, Trevi Fountain and the Colosseum) to exploring all of the amazing foods to eating your fair share of gelato 🍨! Whatever you decide to do, you can do it on a budget and have an amazing time!
If you are interested in going to see the monuments I highly suggest getting the Rome City Pass. This pass allows you to choose the number of monuments you would like to see and you even get to schedule the date and time you would like to go!
Like I stated before Italians are known for their metro (Termini) system. Our hotel was a short walk to the main termini where you could catch a train to go nearly anywhere in Italy or even Europe by the high speed rail. One day on our trip we decided to take the high speed rail down to Naples and visit Pompeii - the ancient city ruins.
Now if you don’t know anything about Pompeii know that this was once a rich and vibrant city that was unfortuantly covered in lava from the Mount Vesuvius eruption🌋. It unfortunately killed all the inhabitants of Pompeii burying them under lava, spot and ash.
We learned, we wined, we dined and we explored the city on a budget by saving money our our overall expenses with the flight hotel stay and transpiration. In addition we saved money on tourist related attractions by buying a city pass in advance & we saved even more by doing what the locals did - walk and take public transit!
Whew, that’s a pretty detailed account of our trip! It really was an amazing time and we are looking forward to traveling back to Italy soon to explore other parts of the region. If you follow me on instagram, I hope that you caught the highlight of all of our adventures!!
Until our next adventure - Ciao Bella
💋xoxo Mel
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