First Impressions of Rome, Italy

Gotta stop jaywalking okay so it's 6:30 a.m. and I'm in the eternal city of Rome and I'm gonna try to cover the best spots in Rome in this,jam-packed day…so I just spent the last two hours walking around the streets of Rome just taking in the city and I started from my hostel went all the way to the Victor.

 

Emmanuel monument which I believe was built by the first King when he unified the modern country of Italy back in the 1860s. Now if you're visiting Rome I would strongly recommend doing this walk on at least one morning right after the sun rises and seeing the city streets, because of course it's the golden hour and that soft rich light makes everything look super pretty. But you can get that during the sunset too- the cool thing about heading out at sunrise is that you get to see the streets of Rome without the mobs of tourists that you see at any other time of the day. I think that's a pretty cool experience

 

So it's 8:30 a.m. right now and I just tried my first ever Italian espresso

Right now I'm heading to the Church of st. Peter in Chains which is right next to the Colosseum and this famous church has a very famous piece of work by a very special artist. so I'm at the Church of st. Peter in Chains which is only a couple hundred. yards away from the Colosseum and not a lot of people know about this place. because the Colosseum is mobbed by tourists any time today but if you come here at the right time of the day like I did, you can get to enjoy one of Michelangelo's most famous masterpieces in complete silence and appreciate that art.

 

Of course Michelangelo is one of the more famous artists from the Renaissance and a lot of people know him for being the guy that painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. What a lot of people don't know is that he definitely preferred sculpting to painting which is pretty amazing for someone who painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. I've read the reason for which he preferred sculpting to painting was a deeply philosophical.

 

one and a pretty cool one so unlike creating something on an empty canvas from scratch like Leonardo da Vinci did, he preferred sculpting because he believed that was a more humble form of art and he was revealing something in the marble that was already there in the first place. It's funny these little kids

 

just saw me blogging in there asking me if I have a channel on YouTube and I was like yeah I do but not a lot of people really watch this stuff Anyways back to you a fun fact about Michelangelo. A lot of people don't know that a lot of his sculptures that you see now didn't really have the loincloths when he made them,  so those were added after he passed away by the church or the Vatican or Rome because they thought it was inappropriate to have sculptures of holy figures with their junk hanging out. If you know about a sculpture called a risen Christ which is in another church by the pantheon that was originally a nude sculpture of Jesus Christ and they added that loincloth at a later date.

okay so after waiting for an hour despite getting a ticket in advance finally managed to get in the Colosseum  and it's insane that 2000 years after that massive venue was built you can to this day go to the same stands where ancient Romans went and watched gladiators fight till death. Something really cool about the gladiators that I didn't know until this trip: these gladiators had lives that were very similar to the ones of pro athletes in the u.s. let's say today. 

They had groupies apparently. They were the biggest celebrities in town and I think the funniest part to me was that they also had product endorsements in ancient Rome.Right now I'm at the Roman Forum and the bells that you hear going off in the distance I think from the temple of Rome and Venus, also known as the temple of Roma and Amor. So the Roman Forum used to be a pretty important part of ancient.

 

Rome. It was host to the fancy parades that happened when a dictator from Rome won a big war overseas so the victor would ride through in this parade with their four-horse chariot. With him would be the slaves, would be the people he conquered along with exotic animals from the places he conquered. So there would be lions and elephants and hippos in these parades apparently. Behind me, way back there, that's the arch of Titus. So this arch was built after Titus won the war against Judea or ancient Israel and that was actually the last time that a political Jewish state existed in 70 AD until the modern State of Israel was created after World War two.

 

it's around 3 p.m. right now and I am in front of the Pantheon.So the Pantheon is the best-preserved temple from the Roman era where pagan.gods were worshiped and the reason behind that is that, right after they stopped worshiping pagan gods in here, they turned it into a normal Church where they worshiped Jesus and it's continued to be one to this day. This one's also free entry so make sure you visit the Pantheon whenever you visit Rome protip: don't try to sit down in there I tried to sit down and take a picture of the roof and they made me get up and that was pretty embarrassing.

 

it's mid-afternoon right now so I think it's time for another cup of coffee.So I just did a four-hour ride with Free bike tour room and I strongly recommend doing that if you're visiting Rome. I think this is the coolest thing.. hey guys.. I think this is the coolest thing I've done in Rome so far. The guide Lorenzo was super cool. He showed us some of the coolest things in Rome that I didn't even know you could see the things. He took us to the coolest spots to see the

 

Colosseumn, the forum, the very touristy things that most people usually see but just from a much better viewpoint and the best part is it's free. You can tip.

 

Most people did (please do) but there's no pressure for doing that and not only that. He also took us to the best pizza shops, the cheapest pizza places, the places where you can get the cheapest beer, the cheapest coffee in Trastevere so I cannot think of a reason for which you should skip the Free bike tour Rome I'll provide a link for their Facebook page and TripAdvisor and everything else down in the description. So I've been in Rome for a minute Rome for more than 48 hours now and somehow I've managed to avoid getting pizza which is probably the most famous thing about Rome aside from coffee and wine one of the reasons

 

I still haven't had pizza yet is because everywhere I've been to the pizza is super expensive but finally I think Lorenzo recommended a place to me which looks really good and also looks affordable so no offense to American pizza, really love it but I think that right there was as good as the best pizza I've ever had definitely gonna be coming back there. The way the way they were serving it was interesting too.They had like one big pizza which is a rectangle and they were like cutting it up with scissors and serving me just as much as I wanted and then weighing it, so I've never seen that before.

 

That's probably because I've never been to Europe before. The best part was after I had the pizza I was asking them what's like a good.. hello... like a good local place to get coffee around here. And they told me where to go, pulled out a map, highlighted the path where I need to go, just gave me the map so that's where I'm going right now to get some hopefully cheap coffee that's also local

 

coffee. Okay so I never found the coffee place that I was looking for but while I was looking for it I found another good place that had espresso for one euro and I was like, why not. An interesting thing about getting food and getting coffee in

 

Italy is that the price of things go up when you sit down at a table so the same coffee that's one euro when you get it at the bar or at the table becomes two euros when you sit up sit down at a table and get it. I've never seen anything like that at least in the US. Obviously this is still not the same day as I had intended it to be when I started doing this vlog, but in my defense, what happened yesterday was after I had my second cup of coffee I think that was around 3:30, I went back to my hostel to grab a charger or something and I was so tired and so jet-lagged that I completely crashed.

 

So there was a lot of stuff that I wanted to do yesterday but I couldn't because I fell asleep in the afternoon so I thought it was only fair that I do those things today in that same time span of four hours and put it on the vlog as well and I'm pretty confident that everything you're gonna see in this

 

you can do it all in one day everything - the free bike tour. That's four hours. I don't think you can fit everything else I'm doing and that. I'm now I'm gonna move on to the next destination.which is the Capitoline Hill museums, also the oldest museums in the world

 

so

I gotta like approach this more steadily next time Thank you. Appreciate it

Hi birdie

so I just got out of Capitoline Hill museums and I believe this museum is the

oldest Museum in the world. It's right next to the Roman Forum. Make sure you

visit it if you have the chance to visit It's not free entry. It's like 15 or 13

euros depending on whether you're a student or not. I think it's very much

worth the money. The most famous piece of work in this museum is probably the

statue by Michelangelo, which if i zoom in, you can see that in the background

right there I like to call it the old spice man statue but obviously that's

not the real name. That's not even the real statue actually. The original

sculptor for Michelangelo is inside the museum. It used to be where this replica

is right now but they moved that there a few decades ago so they can preserve it

better from pollution. There are two more pieces of work in this museum that are

my favorite and are very special to me and to tell you why I'm gonna have to

backtrack two decades and tell you a little story. SoI had to get away from

that spot because a bunch of kids showed up behind me and they were yelling and

all. But back to my story So back in second grade I had my first

ever history book for elementary school and this was way before I knew who

 

Michelangelo was at that point Michelangelo was just a turtle from TMNT for me and I was so excited about having history class for the first time that I read the entire book for my second grade history class even before the school. year started and if I remember right, chapter three of that book was on ancient Rome and in that book I read the story about of how Remus and Romulus, the two brothers according to Roman mythology, were raised by a she-wolf and then later on for some reason one of them killed

 

the other one and founded the city of Rome. I don't know how old I was when I realized that this is just mythology and no one actually was raised by she-wolf. I was pretty disappointed but that was one of the main reasons I was super. excited about visiting this museum, was that statue of Remus and Romulus being. breastfed by a she-wolf. That was in my history book from second grade so I went inside the museum, super pumped about seeing the statue and I think it's called the wolf of Rome. As I was wandering through the museum, checking out giant statues of Constantine and all this other cool stuff, I came across this

 

vase. The really cool thing was that there was a picture of this vase in that same second

grade history book that I pretty much memorized when I was 8 years old and I

was so excited to see that. I know this sounds kind of stupid it's just a vase

but for me those really special that I got to see something that I really liked

when I was 8 or 9 years old

hello again so this is 8 22 p.m. right now

and initially my plan was to watch the sunset at the Spanish Steps but I went

back to the hostel around 6 p.m. to take a little break and there was free

sangria at our hostel between 7:00 and 8:00 so I ended up staying there a

little bit longer, having a few glasses of wine the next thing I know it's 8

p.m. and I don't have time to go to the Spanish Steps but one of the things that

 

I promised myself I'd try my best to do is for this three-month trip in Europe, I'd try to spend every sunset outside. This is me making my best effort at going outside at 8:22 p.m and watching the sunset. I can't really see the Sun right

 

now if you can't tell. But I do see the last traces of daylight and I walked 5 minutes from my hostel to come to this place which I believe is called Basilica santa maria and i just wanted to finish the vlog for the day. You can do a lot in rome in one day mainly because everything is so close to each other it's really a walking City. Real quick pointers on if you're visiting Rome first thing: definitely goes somewhere in the morning if you can. The best time to go would be really early in the morning like 6:00 a.m. or 7:00 a.m. around sunrise when you get the best light, but if you can't do that it's fine to go at

 

9:00 a.m. I went to the Pantheon yesterday and it was so crowded I barely had any space to stand. Today I went to the same place before 9 a.m. before I have to go to the Free Rome Bike tour and it was virtually empty. It's so much easier to enjoy a place when you don't have to worry about a mob of tourists bumping into you. I would also say reserve tickets in advance for the

 

Colosseum and for the Vatican. For the Colosseum if you're already here in Rome and you don't have a ticket reserved in advance, there's another way to get around it. When you buy a ticket for the Colosseum, you buy it for both the Colosseum and the Roman Forum but the line is so much longer for the Colosseum than it is for the forum so I advise getting your ticket at the forum and then using that same ticket to go into the Colosseum. The best thing honestly I would say, is to spend an extra two euros and just book a ticket in advance you don't have to worry about anything at all

 

How are you doing? doing okay? Pretty good. (stranger:) Where you come from? Bangladesh, where are you from? Senegal. Senegal? You have a good football team yeah thank you yeah you made it to the world cup But where you live? video. Let me see if I can focus in on you. What's your name? yeah okay hello hi how are you good? yeah pretty good So you take some video Yeah basically. What's your name? Papi  Papi like

 

P A P I Papi nice to meet you Papi. Alright

Nadir. Nice to meet you. (offers me bracelet which I thought he was trying to sell) No no

It's for you. Free? Yeah man

We are together bro

Bro. Thatt's awesome, thank you Papi. Nice to meet you.  One love. All right have a good one

Bro have a good one. That's so cool I just met this guy from Senegal who

gave me a free bracelet. That was really nice of him. So cool. Yeah you get

 

The weird thing is there a lot of Bangladeshis in Rome which I was not expecting at all and most of them are working on the streets so it was really nice to get like helpful advice from random Bangladeshis on the street just because I spoke their language and when you're a Bangladeshi you know if someone's a Bangladeshi just if you look at them, so that was really nice but that's probably not the case for you if you're visiting Rome because there are not a lot of people from Bangladesh visiting Rome I don't think I know anyone else that's ever been to Rome.  I'm sure my friends of friends have done it, but I personally 

don't know another Bangladeshi that's ever been to Rome. But I'm digressing, back to visiting Rome. For the Vatican you definitely need to book that in advance for 4 euros. Otherwise you'll be spending half a day in line. Now if you're fine with doing that that's okay, but if it's raining like it is going to be tomorrow

 

when I go to the Vatican then that's gonna be a pain in the butt. You don't

want to go through that. That's it for this Blog.

 

America because that's usually where I travel and also from parts of Asia because I go there like once a year Thank you for watching. You guys have a good one I'll see you guys next week or whatever…