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
video, 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 vlog. If you like this video don't
forget to like the video or put a thumbs up. Don't forget to subscribe to my
channel if you want to see similar videos from Europe, a lot from Central
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