Buon giorno
tutto il mondo.
Come stai?
Now, I don't speak Italian.
Non parlo molto italiano.
I don't know if that was correct,
but what I was trying to say was,
"Good morning world. How are you doing?"
Right now I am in Rome, Italy.
I'm here with the lovely Carrie Rad, my beautiful girlfriend.
Ciao. Buon giorno.
Marko and I just wrapped our shoot up in the Shetland Islands.
He's headed over to the Basque Country to go on a foodie adventure,
and I am here in Italy with Carrie.
She's been here trying to figure out her Italian citizenship
for the last couple of weeks, travelling around with her mom.
It was so neat to come back here and see family.
My family lives in Nola, which is southern Italy,
and it was so cool to just reconnect with everybody in...
I don't know... traveling with your mom
in your 30s is fun, and we had a really good time.
You're not 30 yet, though.
You're 29. But, I'm just rounding up.
We don't have a lot of time here in Rome, unfortunately.
We only have today because tomorrow we're going to be renting a car,
and we're going to be road tripping up through Tuscany,
trying to hit all of the hot springs.
There's a bunch of hot springs up there.
And then we're going to head up to Venice and try to catch the tail end of Carnival.
So it's going to be fun.
It's going to be really mellow.
We're going to keep these vlogs pretty straight forward,
but we have some exploring to do.
So let's go explore Rome.
Colosseum.. couple of quick facts.
I'm not going to go in there.
It's extremely crowded;
it's one of the biggest tourist attractions in the world,
but it was built by the emperors in the Flavian Dynasty.
In the first century AD
the Colosseum was erected.
It was built over Emperor Nero's Palace.
You know it's been like the blueprint for sports stadiums ever since.
It's kind of the quintessential arena.
It was used for lots of stuff, but probably most famously for
gladiatorial battles, lots of time against animals but
sometimes on special occasions, people versus people.
If you have seen the movie Gladiator,
you kind of understand what it's all about.
There's a saying "bread and circus is what keeps the people happy."
You don't want to have revolts.
You don't have revolution;
you keep the population well-fed;
you keep them entertained, and
blood sport back then was the best way to do that.
There're lots of hustlers in Rome.
There're tons of pickpockets.
Be aware. Be alert.
But everybody is speaking to us in Spanish.
I don't know if I look Spanish.
While it might not look like much today,
this was the Circus Maximus
The Circus Maximus,
the chariot racing arena
where Ben Hur would have been competing.
If you've seen that movie,then you know what I'm talking about.
If you haven't, it's a classic. You should check it out.
They believed that this arena could have held around
250,000 people and what's even crazier is that it's been around
since the 6th or 7th century B.C.
It was believed to have been built by the fifth king of Rome.
There were supposedly seven kings of Rome.
Before Rome became a republic, it was a monarchy and after it was a republic, it was an empire.
But there's just way too much history to take in here.
Rome is basically a giant open-air museum.
You've got to use your imagination.
Maybe 2,000 years ago 250,000 people were sitting here snacking on faro
and watching the chariot races...
just like a day at the Del Mar Fair. Easy.
That back there is Constantine's Arch.
Constantine made the Roman Empire christian,
and that is kind of like what he went into the history books for.
He's the first christian emperor of Rome.
When Rome became christianized, everything changed.
Right now this whole area that we're in is kind of the heart of ancient Rome.
Over there is the Forum. The Forum was where
when new laws were made, somebody would go up to the rostra and announce it to the public.
But it's pretty cool just walking around here.
Even though it's super crowded, even though there's tons of tourists,
it really does kind of take you back to...
letting you imagine what it would have been like.
It's so crazy to look at the Colosseum and imagine what it was like.
I don't know if I would want to be sitting there watching what happens.
There was so much blood, but it's cool to imagine.
So you would want to see it?
I don't know if I could do it.
Something that's very easy to overlook but is super important...
there're free public fountains all over the city.
One of the most lasting elements of Roman culture
are the aqueducts, and the aqueducts are
almost everywhere in the Roman world.
There're still ruins of these amazing aqueducts, some of which span hundreds of miles.
They were built at a slope ever so slightly that the water would flow
naturally from very far away into the city,
feed the baths that the Roman elite would wash in
and the fountains that all of the regular people would drink from.
And it's pretty crazy.
They still have a lot of those fountains flowing,
and the water tastes nice.
I found a chill little plaza nice and quiet, nobody here.
There's a dude selling paninis and beers,
so we got a panini and a Peroni.
It's 2:00 in the afternoon.
Supposed to rain in about an hour,
so we're going to try to squeeze in as much as we can until then.
It's like 3:00 in the afternoon, which is very late to be eating lunch in Italy.
Most of the restaurants are closed,
but we found this cute little spot called Divinostilia Food and Wine.
It's a little wine bar.
It's totally packed right now, so we're eating at the bar.
But we've ordered a beef ragu pasta, caprese salad, two glasses of vino.
Grazie.
Well, that place was deliziosa, magnifico.
Super, super good.
We're going to do as the Italians do and
head back to the Airbnb right here and
have a little snooze.
This could be the world's smallest elevator.
How are you going to fit your backpack here?
If you have claustrophobia....don't go in.
No. I can't even turn around. I have a bag.
I guess I'll just close it with my backpack.
Are we over the weight limit in here?
Maybe. I just ate. Andiamo.
Every key in Italy so far has looked like this,
which I think is so cool because it feels so old-school.
But this actually isn't the right key for that door.
Do you want to use it anyway? That's the one on the gate.
Welcome to our little humble home
and.......nap time.
That was a nice little nap and
the first thing that I said when we lay down the bed was, " I'm ready for my pasta."
But first we are going to take this bottle of Prosecco
to the Colosseum and just sit while the sun sets.
That was a last minute choice,
and I'm glad we're doing it.
Alright ladies and gentlemen, that was 24 hours in Rome.
In all honesty, it was more like six hours running around Rome.
But we did the most that we could in this day.
I think we did pretty good. I think we did a really good job.
I mean you can't do it in a day.
You have to have more than one day in Rome.
Totally, at least three.
But like they said, Rome wasn't built in a day,
and it sure as hell wasn't explored in one.
So if you enjoyed this video, you know what to do..
Give it a big thumbs- up, share with your friends,
subscribe, turn on notifications.
Make sure you subscribe to Carrie's channel,
and stay tuned because we're going to be heading tomorrow up to Tuscany
for hot springs, hilltop villages, wine.
I'm so excited. It's going to be great.
We're going to finish this bottle of Prosecco, finish the sunset.
In the meantime remember to stay curious, keep exploring, and we will see you on the road. Peace.
Ciao. Buona notte.
Ciao......