Roma, the Eternal City - Food, friends, fountains, faith, and Fiats. 3rd September 2026
Ciao Bellas, from Roma.
After we left the cool of Orion’s A/C in Durres, we drove to the port and without going into too many whiny details, we sat in Delph from 6pm until about 10.30pm before we drove on to the ferry. We were the LAST vehicle on this huge ship and old mate told us not to be late the next morning as we would be first off.
Righto, no pressure.
We pretty much crashed in our cabin’s bunks straight away before waking at 6am, having breaky and lining up with thousands of other to disembark.
Just them the P.A. crackled into life:
“Could passenger Jen Sedgwick come to reception.”
We jostled through packed Sardinians (haha - they were Italian and Albanian, but the joke was too tempting to pass up) before the ferry dude led us to the car deck.
We docked, Jen backed out Delph like a pro, and 15 minutes later we were parked up at a secure parking lot. Well, the lot was full, so we put the bikes in Delph as she was not behind a closed gate, got the courtesy bus and arrived at Bari Bus Terminal with two hours to spare.
Again, boring travel day that I will spare you, but we got to our schmicko little apartment in the residential Monti neighbourhood in Roma, just in time for the cocktail hour and met up with our friends from home, Chaeli and Jon!!
Woo Hoo.
We would all stay in Casa Mia Monti for the next four nights before heading to the Puglia region. We caught up over beers, wines, antipasti, and some sort of arancini and pizza (but more on this later)
This was Jon’s first European trip, and Chaeli hadn’t been to Italy in many years, so the excitement levels were high.
I had read that the Trevi Fountain is nearly deserted at night. So after our libations, we headed off on the 10-minute walk - in heat that was still over 30 degrees.
Well, I don’t know who the author was, but they were full of shit. It was packed. There would have been 2000 people there at 10 pm on a Sunday night…
The bonus was that there was no scaffoldi covering it this time, and we got to see the majesty and beauty of this wonderful landmark. A quick roadie and we were all off home after a huge travel day.
The next morning, the best little planner that I know - Jen-Jen, a.k.a. Lynnie Riggs- had the whole day mapped out. She had ALSO read a post by someone who said to escape the heat and crowds of Rome in summer, get on the street by 6.30 am and follow a specific route.
Which is what we did.
Chaeli and Jon had a sleep in (jealous) while we hot-footed it up to El Colosseo - yep, the Colosseum. The light at this time of day was perfect, and Jen-Jen got some cracking shots.
We then walked to the Pantheon via the Roman Ruins and the Vittorio Emmanualle building. An amazing coffee and proscuitto/provolone focaccia stop then followed before we were looking at Bernini’s masterful fountain in Piazza Navona.
A short bus ride and we were back in the A/C at Casa Mia Monti by 9 am.
5000 steps already done for the day. Nae bad, Nae bad at all!
A quick morning siesta (yep I’m pretty good at sleeping on demand) and all four of us were back at the Colosseum for the 12 pm guided tour. The heat was OK, actually, as the stone provides a lot of shade, but the place was packed with touros from all over the world. Our guide was a bit hard to hear through the headsets, but the tour took us through two levels of seating and corridors, and we finished by leaving through the floor level. One of the best things that I learnt was that back in the day, the whole thing was covered in marble, but now some of that marble makes up the front steps at St Peter’s Basilica. Cool. I also knew that they had a canvas roof that the sailors had to put up before the games, but I didn’t know that it took them two weeks to put it up… all without electricity! Awesome!
Another rest in the arvo and then we all got the bus to north of Piazza Navona to do a walking food tour. Our group was 8 people strong - our four, an Aussie couple from Adelaide and a mother and son team from California. Our energetic and inspired tour guide was Alessandra, and she was a font of Roman Cuisine knowledge. Andiamo
Our first stop was a shop that sold the weirdly shaped arancini balls that we had last night - see, I told you I’d come back to this. Except they weren’t called arancini (which means orange, as they resemble the shape and size of the fruit) but SUPPLI. The Roman version of arancini is croquette-shaped, contains tomato risotto and stringy cheese and is crumbed and deep-fried. This was traditionally a poor person's dish, and French sailors named it Supplì because the cheese was a surprise, and suppli means surprise.
They were delicious and a great way to start the tour.
Next stop was last night's flat pizza breads (WHAAAT??) There were 20 varieties in this shop, and you pay by weight. The server will run their knife or scissors along, and you say “BASTA” when you want them to cut. Awesome. We tried the traditional Margherita (named after Queen Margaret from back in the day) and then a gooey cheese and black pepper one, which was surprisingly delish - like traditional carbonara without the pasta and cream. We also got takeaway Peroni’s here before we made our way to the next stop.
We stopped at two brothers' football-themed shop for sandwiches next.
Sandwiches on a food tour I hear you ask? Well, they were paninis. And what paninis they were, too.
We had prosciutto, cheese, lettuce, tomato and tonnato (tuna cream - which sounds disgusting but was actually delicious) toasted on amazing bread. Apparently the family bake the bread on the family farm an hour away and drives in each day to deliver it. Even Stanley Tucci went there when he did his food tour of Italy. These were washed down with a local beer called Raffo, and all was good in the world, my friends.
The final two stops were in the funky, bohemian-esque quarter of Rome called Trastevere. Buskers, graffiti, pubs, stalls, etc., populated this area, and we had our two sweet courses of the tour: Sicilian cannoli and gelato. We all went for different flavours, and they were all excellent.
A cool thing that Alessandro also told us was that the 1000 free-flowing taps that litter the city are all spring water fed, are all cool - even in the swelter- and are all delicious to drink. To drink like a Roman, one must block the end of the tap, and the water comes through the hole halfway along the spout, which makes a bubbler. I LOVED it!
What a food tour. We tipped Alessandro and got a cab home before crashing out after a 20,000-step day!!
You’d think that we’d have a sleep-in after that day, right? Well, you’d be wrong.
Again, we were up at sparrows and on the bus to be at the door of St. Peter’s Basilica at 7.00 am when they opened. Jon and Chaeli were doing the Vatican tour, so we parted inside St.Peter’s Square. We walked through the world’s biggest cathedral, and even though we’d been there several times, it still took our (garlic) breath away.
After a quick breaky, Riggsy and I went home, slept, had a foot massage at a Thai place and rested until we had our 7 pm booking at a restaurant called Dar Bruttone Rione Monti.
We placed our orders and were shown to long tables where you sat side by side complete strangers.
The food was excellent. Jon and I both went for the meatballs, Chaeli the Veal Saltimbocca, and Riggsy, the fried porchetta and potatoes. Accompanied by bread, a bottle of Chianti, and water, the whole meal was under 100 Euros. Spot on!
There was no time to linger though, as we had an 8 pm booking at a church called St Paul’s to see the three tenors.
Now obviously, they weren’t the original three tenors, but they were epic anyway. For the next 90 minutes, we sat in a Roman church listening to a string quartet and piano play popular Opera classics whilst these three blokes sang, hammed it up and entertained the packed crowd. Fatty. Messi and Dorky were excellent.
This was our first real taste of opera, and it was a great way to spend a night.
We relaxed the next day, but Jon and Chaeli did a tour of Rome in a 1965 Fiat, which they absolutely loved. We did some organisational stuff before we ate our leftover food for dinner and crashed.
I went on a solo mission after dinner to have a whiskey nightcap and get a shot of some domes all lit up. So cool
That’s about it.
We averaged about 15,000 steps a day, and the average heat was 36 degrees.
Despite this, we took it on and loved it. Chaeli and Jon were great travel buddies, and we were so glad to have experienced this week with them.
Roma, the Eternal City, we love you eternally, and we will be back again one day. My coin in Fontana di Trevi even proves it.
Ciao, Bellas
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