18 Tips I Wish I Knew Before Visiting Rome, Italy

These 18 tips to know before visiting Rome are what I wish I knew before my trip to Rome, Italy. Hopefully these travel tips will help you from making some of my mistakes when traveling through Rome and the rest of Italy!

The Tuesday Travel Tip Newsletter: https://bit.ly/TheTuesdayTravelTip

The eSIM I use to keep my phone connected when abroad — https://airalo.pxf.io/CamdenDavid –You can get 15% off as a new user by using code: CAMDEN15

Where I get my travel gear — https://bit.ly/NomaticCamdenDavid
How I stay organized — https://amzn.to/3OHQLEA
My favorite universal adapter — https://amzn.to/3N0YzAg

DISCLAIMER: I only express my opinion based on my experience. Your experience may be different. Links above may include affiliate commission or referrals. I’m part of an affiliate network and I receive compensation from partnering websites. This video is accurate as of the posting date but may not be accurate in the future.

I just got back from Rome and there are some things that I wish I knew before going so I’m going to share those with you so we’re going to cover the best way to travel within the city some cultural things that you might want to be aware of some ways to maybe try to avoid tourists if at all possible some things that you might want to do before your trip to set yourself up for Success I’m going to tell you about a couple of my favorite areas to explore and favorite spots to grab food and I’m going to tell you about the top attraction that I kind of wish that I had skipped so the first tip is actually how you should be getting from the airport to downtown Rome and I think a lot of tourists end up making the mistake of overpaying for a taxi you don’t need to actually do that there’s something called the Leonardo Express and it is a great option if you’re looking to save cash it only costs about € 14 and it’s a direct train straight from the airport to the main Central Station in downtown Rome there are no stops so it’s basically impossible to screw up and you don’t even need to worry about buying tickets before your trip they actually have the ticket kiosks right in baggage claim so while you’re waiting for baggage you can go ahead buy those tickets follow the sign straight to the train it couldn’t be any easier but the second thing to knowe is really important if you’re going to take that train or any other trains throughout Italy and it’s that you need to validate your ticket when you buy your ticket you can’t just hop on the train you have to validate it first which just means walking up to these little machines that are all over the train stations putting your ticket in it it’ll put a little stamp on it and voila it’s validated so make sure you do that cuz you can get fined if you don’t nothing to freak out about but do make sure you validate those tickets the next thing to note is that there are a lot of cities around the world that you can just kind of show up and start exploring and while you could definitely do that with Rome I wouldn’t really advise it this really is a city that has so much to see so I would really recommend creating some sort of Game Plan before you go and I’ll help you with that in just a second but also note that I think a lot of tourists make the mistake of saying hey ROM is really big there is some much to see so I’m going to need Transportation I need to book a driver how am I going to get around I really don’t think it’s an overwhelming City to navigate by just walking and I think it’s a really Charming City to walk through so save yourself the money no need to waste it sit on taxis or things like that just be sure to save yourself a little bit of extra time to walk from one place to another again it’s really Charming you’re not going to regret that at all but another thing that’s really important to do before your trip in Rome is some of those big destinations like the Coliseum and the Vatican Museum they fill up really really quick and yes you can buy tickets day of but there are ridiculous lines you’re going to spend all your time just waiting in line there’s no need to do that you can buy those in advance and I’d highly highly recommend it having those allow you to skip the line entirely so it’s just going to save you a bunch of time and means you get to spend your time actually seeing things rather than waiting in lines and also note that I noticed that the Vatican museum tickets seem to sell out quicker than the Coliseum so keep that in mind now you might have noticed that I didn’t actually mention buying the pantheon tickets ahead of time and no that’s not because it’s the place that I don’t recommend we’ll get there later but actually the pantheon website it was really weird it seemed kind of sketchy and they wouldn’t actually accept my payment method so I couldn’t buy my tickets ahead of time maybe you’ll have better luck than I did but I did have to just wait and buy it day of now if you are going to do that note that there are two different lines there’s a Cash ticket line and a credit card or debit card and for some reason the credit card line was so much shorter than the cash line so just keep that in mind that if you are going to go and buy those the day of look at those two different lines recognize that there are two different lines and then pick whichever one is shortest cuz you definitely shouldn’t miss the pantheon now let’s talk about some of those cultural differences that are going to be important to be aware of before you go so the first one is around coffee and there’s no wrong way to enjoy coffee in Rome but do not that the locals actually stand and drink their coffee or take it to go so if you’re the American and you’re saying hey I’m going to sit down and have my coffee you’ll notice that you’re going to get charged a little bit extra and that charge is because you’re sitting down so they’re not trying to scam you that really just is a part of the culture and another cultural difference that’s kind of cool that you want to be aware of is that dinner happens between the hours of 8:00 p.m. and 10: p.m. and the reason for that is because between 6 and 8 there’s something called an apparao and what an aaro is is a local tradition where you typically go and have an alcoholic beverage and that is going to be served with small bites not everywhere is going to have antivo so it’s not something that you have to partake in it’s just something that if you want to partake in that local culture be on the lookout for and maybe do some research ahead of your trip cuz it is pretty cool and also note that if you’re going to Rome you’re definitely going to want to check out some of the churches right but there is a dress code when you go into the churches typically that is you cannot be showing your needs you have to have something that goes below your needs and shoulders cannot be shown I don’t know why I did this but yeah shoulders can’t be shown make sure that you’re dressed appropriately so you don’t get turned away at those churches or get in trouble for it by the way if any of this has been helpful and you want more travel tips like this feel free to subscribe if you want to follow my journey I move to a new country every single month constantly putting out videos like this and if you prefer a newsletter form I send out the top travel tip that I learn every single week so feel free to subscribe to that the link will be in the descript description now I’ll jump into the tips on how you can best avoid tourists and talk about that one attraction that I kind of wish that I skipped in just a minute but I want to tell you about a couple areas of town that I think are a little bit off the unbeaten path but still really accessible for most tourists and a couple of my favorite places to eat so three areas jump out to me the first one is a place called Monty it’s great for a couple of reasons one it’s a super trendy upand cominging area of town that’s a lot of fun it is really close to that train station that I mentioned that that Leonardo Express is going to drop you off at and it’s also still pretty Central it’s going to give you easy access to things like the Coliseum and the other areas of town that tourists are realistically going to want to check out so it’s definitely a good place to base yourself we really enjoyed it over there the other place is the Jewish ghetto again a place that some tourists don’t end up venturing down to but that would be a mistake not to and the third area is a neighborhood called traste still really easily accessible from the central part of Rome but some of the better food is over there and you’re not going to experience as many tourists definitely one of those great places to wander in speaking of great food places there’s two that I want to point out one is over in Monty and it’s called mizio street food it’s this little hole in the wall but it’s got great street food think sandwiches and nothing there is going to disappoint really enjoyed going there and the other place I’ll recommend to you is a spot called 53 Untitled we went back a couple times it was one of the best meals that we had in all of Rome it is going to be a proper sit down dinner but the dishes are fantastic so highly recommend them if you’re looking for a sit down but let’s talk about how to avoid some of those tours because when you’re going to Rome they are going to be tourists right you’re not going to be able to avoid them completely but there are a couple tips if at all possible I’d really recommend booking an off season trip meaning in the winter months that’s what we just did and it was way better than when I went in the summer the winter months are just a lot less people so you’re not fighting the crowds like you would but even if you are going in the summer months this next tip applies for both winter and summer and it’s wake up as early as possible and stay out as late as possible typically if you can be up in the morning before like 9:00 a.m. you’re not going to have many tourists you’re going to have beat most of them out and same thing is true is if you can wait for the sun to go down those popular areas like the Trevy fountain or the Spanish Steps people aren’t really going to be around there anymore so it’s much easier to get up close and personal and really sit and just enjoy your time there cuz if you go in the afternoons forget it there there’s just going to be a million tourists it’s not going to be fun but as promised I want to talk to you about that top tourist attraction that I really regretted going to and I probably wouldn’t recommend until they at least change some things and that is the Vatican Museums and while there is so much spectacular art in there it really was just an awful experience because they allowed too many people in at once so much so that there wasn’t anywhere to like break off from the crowd and actually look at the art you’re basically just moving at this like slow walking pace as this gigantic group and you could not peel off in any way shape or form so it just kind of felt like a waste of time in money cuz we don’t know what we saw we saw a lot of pretty things but we had no context cuz we never had the opportunity to stop and see it it was a really bad experience for us so hopefully it won’t be for you but if you have any questions leave them in the comment section down below I hope this was helpful and we’ll catch you guys next time