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5 Random Things I Did This Weekend in Rome

With MWC over this past week, it was off to a new place.  Why not go home you ask?  Because they’re tearing up the floors in our apartment and we have to be out of it for a number of weeks.  Don’t ask, it makes no sense to us either.  So off on a bit of a working holiday we go!

1) Being a tourist!

While I’ve been to Rome numerous times, The Girl has not.  So it was off to knock out some of the more common Rome tourist items during the trip.  Be it the Colosseum, the Vatican, or Trevi Fountain – we made brief appearances at all.

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Our friends David and Lillian also had an overlapping trip to Rome on some of our days as well, so we hung out for two of the 3.5 days we were in Rome with them.  Good times!

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This time of year is nice in Rome, as the crowds are essentially non-existent.  We had no lines at any of the spots we went to.  Perfect!

2) Eating our way across the city

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While there are many great monuments and ruins in Rome, perhaps my favorite Italian attraction is the food.  I mean, who doesn’t like pasta and pizza?  Nobody, that’s who.

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Here, rather than talk to all the awesomeness we ate – I’m just going to give you a pretty gallery.

Now I will say that we found our food experience a bit more mixed than we’ve seen elsewhere.  Ratings on TripAdvisor and the Michelin Guide left us…confused and bummed.  Heck – we went to a Michelin starred restaurant (1 Star) and found it rather disappointing (service, ambiance, and food).  We’re consistently impressed with 1 Star restaurants in Paris and elsewhere, so was rather surprised.

However, we managed to crawl back into the good food graces following the restaurants listed on the recommendations guide of this well known food tours company.  Every one of their spots delivered amazing food that was very reasonably priced.  Much of the foods that we enjoyed the most were ‘simple’.  They were really about good quality ingredients and perfectly timed execution.  No stars required, nor wanted.

3) A Colosseum Run

Friday evening we headed out for a pre-dinner run.  We didn’t have a lot of time, so The Girl and I just made for a nice 4-5 mile (7-8km) run from our AirBNB place to the Colosseum.  It was a bit slow going since the crowds were far heavier than we expected that time of night, but we made it.

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Rome is a pretty easy city to run around, especially if you stick to some of the main routes connecting monument areas to the rivers (or to parks).  However, if you try and run through some of the smaller streets, like most European cities you’ll end up slowing your pace down quiet a bit (though, it’s fun GPS testing…).

4) A bit of work to be done

Now as nice as it is to be wandering around Europe for a few weeks, the interwebs must still go on!  So I took the majority of one of the days to knock out a bunch of posts, including both the Apple Review & Garmin Fenix3 HR review.  Not to mention getting through additional reviews lined up for this upcoming week.

At home I have various places I do specific photo shots in, depending on the purpose.  But being in a new town, it was off to find all new photogenic places.  Albeit, in most cases, that’s really just a generic cobblestone or rock background.  Something non-distracting.  In case you’re curious, much of the Apple Watch & Garmin Fenix3 HR close-up photography was just done next to some centuries old pillar:

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I’m always looking for a quiet side street for this sort of thing.  People usually give me weird looks taking pictures up close of watches.  Shrug.

5) Flew off to the Atlantic Ocean

Finally, we left Rome very early Sunday morning (well before sunrise) to catch two flights to the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.  Or rather, the eastern portion of the Atlantic Ocean.

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You can swing over to Strava to see a little peek at where we’re off to next.  Or, it might just be to throw people off.  Perhaps we’ve already left.  More later this week!

Thanks for reading!

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24 Comments

  1. Michael H.

    Thanks for sharing, just a non-descript backdrop eh?

  2. Jack

    Enjoy this fun traveling… its all going to slow down in sometime less than 9 months… 🙂

  3. Spell Corrector

    “I’m always looking for a quite side street for this sort of thing.” ==> quite should be quiet.

  4. Scott E

    So little time and so much awesome food. Even if you fail to find the perfect spot for a watch shot, the food pictures readily makes for a fine substitute. Happy travels.

  5. Ben Ooi

    Your culinary adventures are really really exciting too! haha

  6. Andy

    Any recommendations on Airbnb in Rome? Heading there this summer.

  7. Daniel

    I always enjoy whenever you post something about your trips…I just wish you would actually say the name of the places you ate in 🙂

    • Yup – I included the link to the place that listed all the recommendations. We pretty much ate at all those places on the list. Da Enzo was solid, as was the gelato place Fatamorgana.

      Everything else we ate at (not on the list), I definitely wouldn’t recommend. 🙁

    • Daniel

      Thanks! 🙂 It was more of a general comment, in some other blog posts you don’t say where the place of the photograph is 🙂

  8. Tony

    Hi Ray,

    been spending part of my summer holiday on a yacht in the harbor of Las Palmas. I did kind of same run you posted once. However later I reverted to daily just running down-and-up the boulevard on the East Coast, from harbor to some big statue and back about 20K. Another tip: just across the main road from the harbor is a little public sports park including a 1K running loop. Best atmosphere! If you’re still around go check it out.

    BR., T.

  9. Chris

    International man of mystery!

  10. Nice to see you were in Gran Canaria 🙂 The Canary Islands are a paradise for sports. They got very nice international sports challenges in many areas: Ironman Lanzarote, Transgrancanaria, Transvulcania, the most PWA’s places in the world (Pozo Izquierdo, El Médano, Costa Teguise) and many other (rock climbing, surf and bodyboard, downhill…). I just missing be there again 😛

  11. MJL

    Ray,
    Are you gaining any baby weight? Really, it’s the fatherly thing to do. 😉
    -Ciao

  12. Kyle

    What is that delicious hot pocket-looking item The Girl is holding in pic #10?

  13. Ravi

    Its lunch time in Austin, TX and all these beautiful pictures is making me hungrier.

  14. Anthony

    We were also in Rome on holiday last week before flying back to Paris. Hope your AirbnB experience was better than ours- we got burgled! Worse still, I caught a chest infection that looks to rule ended out of the Semi de Paris:-(

    Still, the weather was great as was the food and wine.

  15. Robert Black

    Thanks for the links, we’re going in October, sadly not for a race. ( cure concert) did check out a few race sites to see if anything was on locally, is it obligatory as a foreigner to sign up for that card to be able to race any race or is it just the larger events?

    • Vincenzo

      It’s only for competitive events.

    • Often in Europe they do require a medical certificate. But you can get that signed pretty much anywhere (just print out and have handy). In France, I can re-use the same medical cert for 1-year.

    • Tony

      Most of the time the ‘medical certificate’ is just used as a waiver for medical responsibility. I think there’s some phrase in an Italian law somewhere or something. Most of the time they just want your medical doctor to confirm that he has no prior knowledge of anything hampering your ability to join competitive racing. So your doctor should not even have to examine you, but just check your files for any contra-indication. Should be no problem, just formalities…

      Good luck with whichever race you’re going to attend.

  16. Casey

    i remember those days; travel, vacations, care-free living. 2 kids later, not so much. Enjoy it while you can!