Hello fellow travelers!
My friend and I will be taking a contiki tour through Europe in April. We are flying into Rome early on the 12th and our tour starts late afternoon on the 14th so we have a couple days to ourselves. We will be hitting the main sights in Rome and Florence on the tour. What should we do with our extra couple days that we can get to easily from FCO and have us back to central Rome by by the 14th?
Thank you friends!
How long is your tour group going to be in Rome? With only your jet-lagged arrival day, one next day, and then joining your tour group the following afternoon, that's not a lot of time to explore beyond Rome. If you are only in Rome for 2-3 days with your tour, I'd strongly suggest exploring Rome beyond the "main sights" and getting into the Trastevere neighborhood, or hanging out around Piazza Navona and Campo Fiore, or into the Jewish neighborhood. Will your tour go to the Borghese Gallery and park? Or out to Ostia Antica? If you are determined to leave Rome, perhaps a day trip to Orvieto would scratch that itch. It's a wonderful hill town one hour away directly by train from Roma Termini station. But with just those two nights preceding your tour beginning, you might be glad if you check into your Rome tour hotel a couple of nights early and use that as your base of operations (to any of the above) and save yourself a hotel change, which takes up precious energy and hours. If you really really want to leave Rome, you could take a train to Orvieto from FCO (with a change at Termini) and spend two nights there.
Great advice! Staying in Rome is probably the way to go :) thank you for identifying some key places to visit. Do you have any favorite places we should visit besides the main tourist sights? We plan to do those of course, but any shops or eateries we should make anpoint to visit are also appreciated. We tend to spend too much time trying to find the perfect place on yelp lol
Are the Piazza Navona , Campo Fiore, and Jewish neighborhood walkable or is there any travel involved? We don’t plan to have a car
All are walkable.
You can also make a short side trip from FCO to either the town of Orvieto, Villa d'Este, Tivoli Gardens, or Ostia Antica. You have options. For eateries and experiencing a great italian neighborhood, explore the Trastevere neighborhood in Rome.
Depends on where you are staying. If you are in a big "tour hotel" out in the suburbs then no, they are not walkable from your hotel. You'll need to take the Metro (subway) or a cab to get into the heart of Rome. However, Piazza Navona, the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, Campo Fiore, etc., are all within a mile or so of everything else named, and are within easy walking distance of lots and lots of hotels in the heart of Rome. If you download Rick Steves' free "Rick Steves Audio Europe" app, there are a number of FREE audio tours that you can download and then use once you are there. His "Heart of Rome" audio tour covers these sites. It also has a map attached to the tour, on the app, that shows you where to walk (and where to get gelato along the way!). You could also pick up a copy of his "Rome" guide (the book) and read about the neighborhoods and look at the possible walking tours of those neighborhoods. That book gives lots of recommended places to eat, in specific neighborhoods.
I would like to add that NOT EVERYONE is "jet lagged" when stepping off an international flight. We get on the plane, have a snack, wine and we are off to sleep. I must admit that it is not the best sleep, but sleep. We have hit the ground running and enjoyed our first day with sight seeing, tours and dinner. We are doing a day in Tivoli for a little off-site adventure from Rome, maybe check that out.
Now, the flight home to the US is a different story!
