The Sawyer Stories

On Day 16, we woke up on the ferry to a great morning. It was a great day to finally be in Italy! We had a great day traveling and seeing iconic views and buildings during the bike tour.

Highlights from Day 16

1. Waking up on the ferry to Rome was a pleasure, and then we just chilling for an hour in the room while packing to get ready. It had really built up a lot of anticipation to be getting on the road. On the way, I got to have a delicious donut though (yum).
2. When we got off the ferry in Bari, we found ourselves at a container yard. Not being sure where to go exactly, we decided to follow some people to a free shuttle bus. Learning from the mistakes of the day before, we later decided to take a taxi. We quickly found a taxi station and took a taxi to Bari Central.
3. We went to our normal activity, window shopping, but in Bari the stores are too fancy (Rolex, Prada, and Gucci to name a few) for Amber to let Liam in. That was until we found the candy store. I spent about 11 euros in the store on Italian candy (now all I need British candy).

• The train ride was very cozy for us. With a great sitting space, comfortable seats, and nobody in our section. Getting stalled for an hour wasn’t the best, but it was because another train had issues. The silver lining is we had more times for games and movies. But this gave us one less hour in Rome than we already had.
• Unfortunately we couldn’t pregame for lunch because Bari was only serving breakfast. This left us at the whims of train food. Lucky us had tofu and olive sandwiches (Which we all unfortunately do not like olives. Sorry, Greece), Caesar chicken salad where we could only eat the lettuce, and chips. We survived.

• Once in Rome, we had Italian pizza for dinner! It is the best (which is saying something) pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life. But due to over eating, I was stuffed at the end of dinner.

1. Bike ride prep was cool we got to test the bikes and I got monster wheels, and using an electric bike to help me get up the hills 😎

1. The incredible sites of Rome are 2 things: beautiful and iconic. We went by the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Castle of Saint Angelo, Piazza Navona, St. Peter’s Basilica from a distance, and so many gorgeous squares and archeological sites. We even saw someone getting engaged!

• The major sites were insanely crowded, a sin people were packed in. Now image us along with our group trying to get through on electric bikes. Electric bikes are great for hills and long rides, but less than awesome to go slowly through packed streets and sidewalks. Luckily no pedestrians were harmed at our expense, but we did have some run ins with the curb and, somehow, Amber came home to find here white tennis shoes now had a red bloody heel. If you know her, this is not surprising.

• Fun fact: All water is drinkable in Rome, a fact they are very proud of, (I got to drink some of the water from the fountain) and they came from the aqueducts everywhere underground. This pup wanted water too.

If you only have a short amount of time to visit a huge city, we 100% recommend doing a bike tour. We got to see so much in 3 hours. Add in the beautiful sunset, glowing restaurant lights, and slightly lower (90 degrees) temp, and we had the perfect first Rome experience.