The Tour: Best of Rome in 7 Days
Taking our Rick Steves' Seven Days In Rome Tour was an amazing experience!
It was also a long time coming for us. We had started talking about a trip to Rome before the pandemic. Unfortunately it got delayed and delayed.
Evan (age 15) has had a passion for learning about Roman history for many years now. He gobbles up information about emperors, maps of the ancient Roman Empire, and so much more! So when travel was finally an option again, we decided to join a Rick Steves' tour. We were looking for both the support of the tour guide and scheduled activities balanced with time to explore on our own. This tour was perfect for that!
We were able to visit all the "must see" sites with the tour group, like the Colosseum, Forum, Vatican City, Catacombs of San Sebastiano, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, and more. On our own we explored San Clemente la Laterano (a must see!), Baths of Diocletian, National Roman Museum, Capitoline Museums, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus, Baths of Caracalla, National Archaeololgical Museum of Naples, Pompeii, and even had some beach time in the gorgeous town of Vietri sul Mare.
By the way, all of the pictures here are taken by us (with the exception of the picture of us wading in the Tyrrhernian Sea which was taken by a fellow Rick Steves' traveller). The website was made by Evan and Carrie. We hope you enjoy this glimpse into our amazing trip!
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Our Experience
Prego!
We all used Duolingo before our trip to learn a few Italian phrases. Although we often stumbled over our words we found that most people we spoke with appreciated our efforts and encouraged us to speak Italian by helping us with what we wanted to say. Eric was particularly good at engaging in conversation and his efforts earned us free drinks more than once!
More gelato please!
We LOVED the gelato in Rome and ate it everyday. There was a little gelato place a block or so away from our hotel. One night we sat outside of the gelateria under an orange tree, enjoying our treats as the sun was setting. It would have been picture perfect had Eric not gotten hit on the head by a falling orange!
Packing light
Lots of people overpack for trips. Not us. So many people warned us about overpacking that we actually underpacked! While we were grateful to not have to check our bags (especially when our flight got cancelled) if we had it to do over we would have packed more staples like socks and t-shirts.