Hmm, so Rome! I'm sorry that there are so many updates at once but usually I write the updates when I'm on a bus or plane so I usually don't have internet at that point :)

Rome was an interesting place. In terms of history and architecture it is probably my favourite place. Everywhere you go there is something to see - even when you are walking from attraction to attraction it's exciting. The city is pretty much just one big open museum!

It also helped that it was a lot warmer than what we have been experiencing in Eastern Europe for the past few months! I definitely didn't realise how much effect the cold and the darkness has had on us and how much we can do or see. In Warsaw it always feels like our days are coming to an end by 3pm since it's already pretty much dark. And we are always surrounded by dark grey buildings. When we were in the Baltic countries the buildings were usually beautiful but it got dark early and the freezing conditions meant we often had to go inside to warm up or couldn't focus properly because we were too cold! But in Italy it was nice because the sky was always blue, weather warm and it felt a lot more open. It made us think of you lames back in NZ because at the moment you are always posting photos of the beautiful weather!

One of the things I loved about Rome the most were the churches. Seriously they are the most amazing churches I have ever seen! Every single one is insane - they are all so detailed and covered in gold inside etc. They are really an attraction in themselves.

We also checked out all the typical attractions. I absolutely loved the Roman Forum. We paid like €7 to get entrance to three attractions. This one, the Colosseum, and another but I can't remember what. The forum was really huge and we didn't get to see it all. We had two hours but I reckon you need about 3 or 4. Maybe even more if you are super interested and wanted to look at everything very well. It's actually so incredible how advanced the Romans were over two thousand years ago! Good work guys.

The colosseum was also amazing of course. It wasn't as big as I expected - which is stupid because it was still massive, I'm just an idiot. Unfortunately a lot of the outside was under construction as you would have seen from my photos, but it was still really exciting. It was so strange when we were walking around exciting to think of all the events and all the different people who would have been here. It was a pretty ruthless place.

Most meals we went to restaurants for. After all Italy is also famous for its delicious food. It was amazing for me since there's always beautiful vegetarian options. I pretty much lived off gnocchi, pizza and gelato. In general it's quite expensive although you can find some cheap places. For example we found a really good place close to the Vatican City where most meals were around €5.

We also set a tradition where each night we would buy a few bottles of wine near the Trevi fountain and have a bottle or two there then take the rest to our apartment to play games! It was a really good way to bond - especially when we took it to the roof :) the bottles of wine were cheap - usually around the €4.90 mark.

The next day we went to the Vatican City. My first piece of advice if you are heading this way is avoid bus 64 at all costs. Even worse, avoid the area of EU buildings. We ended up getting ourselves caught in a really frightening anti-EU riot. There were so many people running in the opposite direction, some with their faces covered in blood, some wearing traditional Italian masks, and there were also heaps of riot police with shields and batons. It was 664488 x scarier than what we experienced in Warsaw during Independence Day.

Vatican City was really beautiful. The basilica is insane! It's so huge and stunning. Although it was also quite strange that all the like tombs for popes were so open and accessible. We paid €5 each to go up the top of the basilica and got the most beautiful view ever seriously!!!

I think that's the main jist of what we did in Italy. Right now I'm on a flight to England so more updates soon!

Oh I should also tell you about the amazing polish Christmas dinner we went to! Our super amazing beautiful friends organised an awesome evening for us to experience polish Christmas traditions. We had really yummy beetroot soup with dumplings followed by pierogi (I had Russian ones and cabbage ones yaaaay!). We also drank kompot and ate tasty treats that my friend had baked for us! As well as this she had decorated everything for us including little goody bags that she had prepared for us that even had our pictures on! Matt and I are so lucky to have met some of the most incredible people ever!