Roma e Firenze

AnticaPesa Wall of Fame

A short weekend in Italy for my friend's surprise birthday.  We stayed at the St Regis Grand hotel on Via Vittorio Emanuele Orlando in Rome.  A beautiful luxury hotel in the heart of Rome.  We had the birthday dinner at the AnticaPesa on via Garibaldi (est. 1922), a very popular celebrity destination with good food, service and a wall of fame, mostly full of Hollywood stars.

Ponte Vecchio

The next day, we went by train from Rome Central station for about an hour and a half to beautiful Florence/Firenze, which was my first visit.  I've been dying to visit Firenze for so long.  It was worth the wait. We spent the day exploring the city on foot on some of the oldest cobbled-stone streets. Firenze is a historical city with beautiful architecture, museums, piazzas, monuments, palaces and cathedrals.  We saw the Ponte Vecchio at the Arno river, Firenze's oldest bridge, which also houses Gold jewellery merchants.  We saw the Baptistery of St. John in the piazza del Duomo. Firenze also has fantastic shopping with all the normal high street shops and luxury designer stores, needless to say we also went shopping and all the ladies ended up buying shoes - don't ask! We had dinner back in Rome at a Chinese restaurant based on popular demand.

The Vatican

The Pope

On the Sunday we visited the Vatican city for mass, with hundreds of people in the square.  The Pope appeared at the window and prayed for all of us in at least 5 different languages - very impressive. Also my very first sighting of the Pope.  Afterwards, we hopped on one of the 'hop on hop off' buses called Roma Cristiana for a city tour, which turned out to be the best idea as it started raining.  We hopped off at the Colosseum, and had lunch at the a typical tourist restaurant opposite the Colosseum.  After lunch we went to the Spanish steps, did some more shopping, had tea at the Caffe Greco on via Condotti (A.D. 1760)

Colosseum

A fantastic weekend in Roma and Firenze with great food and good friends, Grazie!