The Hotel Lunetta
It's been almost a year since we went to Italy, and over the past 10 months, there's not a week that goes by when I don't think about that trip! Traveling to Italy was an amazing experience, and the fulfillment of a life-long dream. It's very rare that one can say they took the trip of a lifetime, but this certainly was one of them.
We built our trip to Italy using three "home-bases": Rome, Florence, and Venice. If there is one criticism that I have about the structure of the trip is that I would have started us in Venice and ended in Rome, as once you land in Italy, you want to hit the ground running. With so much to see and do in Rome (and, frankly, it's impossible to fit in everything you could possibly want to do), I feel like it would have been better to have landed in Venice and had a more leisurely start to our trip.
For the Rome portion of our journey, we stayed five nights at the Hotel Lunetta, a boutique hotel in the neighborhood of Campo di Fiori. We cannot recommend this hotel enough! Enthusiastic and professional staff, a nice sized room in a central location, daily breakfast, a spa, and a rooftop bar. We never availed ourselves of the spa, but we can say that the daily breakfast and rooftop bar were certainly a pleasant way to spend some time.
Lobby of the Hotel Lunetta
We truly did hit the ground running after landing in Rome around 10:00am and headed straight for the hotel. Our room wasn't ready, but the staff took our luggage and placed in our room when it was ready. We decided to grab some lunch around the corner from the hotel and orient ourselves as best as possible.
After having breakfast, we spent some time at the open-air market of Campo De Fiori. What an experience! So much fresh food, vegetables, and fruits. Bottles of olive oil. Very enthusiastic merchants. While we did not purchase anything at any of the stalls, it is definitely something you should see.
Open-air market in Campo De Fiori
We walked to and across the Tiber River before heading back to the hotel, and getting ready for our first tour with Walks of Italy. I had found Walks of Italy through Amanda Ruggeri's superlative website, Revealed Rome (in fact, I had a Google Hangout consultation with her a couple months prior to our trip to review our itinerary with her, but more on that another time).
Heading across the Tiber River on one of the bridges
I truly cannot say enough nice things about Walks of Italy. As soon as you head to their website, you'll know what I'm talking about. Everything they do speaks to their professionalism and enthusiasm in giving their clients the very best in small-group tours in Italy. Yes, small-group: as in less than 10 people. Although, since they never have a minimum for their tours, we actually did a couple of small-group tours where the "group" was either myself and my wife or with another couple.
Heading up the Spanish Steps
We had booked the "Welcome to Rome: Twilight City Tour with Gelato" as a way for us to orient ourselves to the city, and see some sites before we tucked ourselves away in bed. Most travel experts, like Rick Steves, will recommend to do some kind of orientation to the new city on the first day: whether it is a guided tour or using a guidebook, there's no better way to introduce yourselves to a new city and get some immediate sight-seeing in.
The orientation tour we did with Walks of Italy was fabulous. We saw so many sites that evening, including the Spanish Steps...
Looking down at the Spanish Steps from above.
... the famous Trevi Fountain (well, everything over in Rome is practically famous, so I guess that was a redundant adjective) ...
Selfie at the Trevi Fountain... like you do.
... and the Pantheon and Piazza Navona.
The Pantheon
As I said, this small-group tour actually consisted of my wife and I and a father/daughter. We were able to leisurely orient ourselves to the city of Rome and take in some pretty major sites along the way. We ended the evening going to a restaurant that the locals go to (we asked our tour guide, which is usually a great way to get a lead on a restaurant that may not be a tourist trap), had a fantastic supper, and headed straight for bed.
End of the day, with a glass of wine
We needed to rest up, because day 2 of our journey was a day-trip to the Amalfi Coast and .... Pompeii!