I recently traveled to the town of Manziana in Italy for one of my best friend’s weddings. Amber and I met in Colorado early 2019 at an entrepreneurship event. We connected quickly and have been close ever since. Despite living in different states for most of our friendship, our commitment to friendship and connection remains :)
I was ecstatic Amber and Nick decided to have an international wedding to share their love of travel with everyone. The wedding weekend was intentional, thoughtful and full of events.
After a long day of travel from Colorado in early April, we arrived in Manziana- a small town north of Rome. We spent our first day exploring the town, visiting a street market, meeting dogs and cats and relaxing at the villa. We ended up seeing this same siamese looking cat every day, multiple times per day. He even attended the wedding looking for food. Everyone in our group gave him a different name and looked for him each day.
We took a train to visit Bracciano Castle nearby. It was built in the 1500’s and was used as military defense as well as a residence for many papal families. After the castle, we went back to Manziana for gelato while we sat in the park and waited for restaurants to open for dinner.
At the end of the day, we had our first true Italian meal. I realized I had misread the metrics for wine and accidentally ordered half a liter instead of one glass of wine which ended up being a happy surprise! We also had an amazing sorbetto drink for dessert.
Our time at the villa celebrating Nick and Amber went by too quickly. Here are some photos from the wedding and the days leading up to it, all taken by friends and Amber’s amazing photographer- Polina Bushkova.
After the wedding, we all took a train to the Rome area wishing our time as a group didn’t have to end. We all got off at different stops to continue our travels independently.
These photos are from Michael and I’s first day in the Trastevere neighborhood just outside of Rome. We had the afternoon to explore while we waited to check into our apartment. We saw cats, graffiti, narrow alleyways that we often ended up going in circles, beautiful churches, the Tiber river, tiny electric cars and detailed aspects of architecture. My love for people watching was easy to do with the two large windows at our apartment.
Each day, we walked around 3-5 miles. This day, we made a trip to the Pantheon. We planned one main activity each day to leave room for wandering and eating lots of food. We stopped in a few churches, alleys to see cats and the rooftop of our apartment to drink lemon spritz. We also met Nora and Carlo, some of my godfather’s friends who own a photography shop called Trevimage next to the Pantheon.
The abundance of graffiti was surprising to see. We learned that citizens of Rome used to occasionally made city complaints by writing them on public statues. I started seeing the graffiti here as an art form and enjoyed the statements made in words and pictures even when it wasn’t ancient.
At the end of the day, we went on a twilight food tour with a group that was special. We ate traditional roman meals of pasta, bruschetta, artichoke, gelato and lots of wine. We got to see a wine cellar, meet new people and drink wine in the streets!
Each day had so many possibilities for sights to see and things to do without making much of an effort. This day, we walked up to Janiculum Hill in Trastevere to see the city views. I loved all the old growth trees and structures we saw there.
Next, we made our way to the Vatican. I was amazed by the details of the floor, the mosaics, the art, the volume of art, visitors and the size of all the rooms we saw. We had a fast paced visit due to the number of people there at one time but it was still incredible to see.
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When we got home that evening, we knew we had limited time left in our trip to see the Trevi Fountain. We had been watching the live cameras online to determine the least busy time to visit, which was actually never! haha
So after our long day, we went to a mini mart for drinks where the cashier opened our beers for us at the register to walk home with. We people watched out the windows for a few hours waiting for crowds to simmer at the Trevi, then we made our 11:30pm trek! We stopped at the Pantheon again too. It was beautiful to see the city at night and have such a different experience. We were lucky to find an electric scooter to ride home.
On this afternoon, we made our way to Villa Borghese where we wandered around an enormous and beautiful park before we saw more paintings and sculptures in the museum. There were a lot of famous Raphaelo paintings here. Afterwards, we went out for a rooftop dinner to have scallops, pasta, wine and a dessert platter.
We also had another late night adventure to see the Spanish Steps that happened to be near the restaurant we had our dinner.
On our final full day in Rome, we slept in and went to lunch at a delicious gem of a restaurant in Trastevere. As usual, we were offered wine at 11:30am. After lunch, we made our way to the Colosseum. We saw ancient ruins in the streets, and the Roman forum.
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Our final dinner was nothing short of incredible. We had some unique cheese wrapped in guanciale (pork cheek) wine and some pastas with mushroom truffles on top.
Although we didn’t travel in a wide radius of Italy, we did our best to fully explore the areas we spent time in. Being able to immerse ourselves in the Italian culture as much as we could made it a special trip that I’ll remember forever. I know this will be the trip that kick starts an urge to travel to more countries soon!
