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Can you visit Rome on a budget? And how much does it actually cost? We're The Budgeteers and we're traveling all around Italy on just 1.000 euros. And in this episode we're in Rome discovering what's fun and what's actually worth seeing. oh no it didn't record This adventure series is made possible thanks to these amazing travel brands: Ortlieb, Komoot and Tropicfeel yeah we woke up now very early. the thing is we got woken up a lot because there are a few roosters here and some geese that just like to have a party at like three o'clock. At all hours of the night yeah but we're gonna get ready we're gonna pack up
our stuff all right and then we're gonna hit the road because it's meant to rain in a few hours yep we're getting ready to leave. This is the house of the wonderful people that hosted us yesterday night. unfortunately they're not home they're already gone to work or somewhere else so we can't say goodbye but if you see this grazie, thanks a thousand time for your hospitality. it just goes to show that complete strangers can be very kind to travelers. yeah we had the best time. okay so now the goal is to get to Siena, before it rains. Before we can explore the city of Rome and do as much as possible on a budget we first have to make it there which will require us
to do an epic cycling challenge from the middle of nowhere in Tuscany we're heading towards the old historic city of Siena. And since yesterday we really didn't get too far we have twice the distance to cover today so we're leaving bright and early and we'll get breakfast somewhere on the road. Be extra careful, choose some good lines to ride, avoid sharp rocks so no flat tires because we have no spares. yeah we're living on the edge. we're still following the old pelgrim trail of the via francigena which goes through the very rustic countryside along beautiful roads passing one cute little village after another
which is pretty fun since you go through places which you would otherwise never see as a tourist. oh no where have we ended up i think we're gonna get murdered! we're so smelly, we're quite smelly. we're very smelly okay two on the road and uh we need to do a wash like we showered our clothes so we've stopped on this bridge and she's grumpy. i am not.i'm not i swear. the exhaustion of cycling for two days was really starting to show we weren't used to this at all and as much as we love this we were reaching our limit. These hills in Tuscany are very steep and they go like straight up we have a beautiful view yeah we keep pushing and doing whatever we can to get us across those steep tuscany hills
our legs are burning but we are surviving somehow which we saw as a victory itself we would just love to continue to cycle and camp like we did yesterday but we want to explore new regions of Italy so we're gonna push on and cycle those last few kilometers so we could make it to Siena for sunset but those last kilometers are proving to be the hardest yes we're finally going down oh my god straight into town hey guys we made it to siena we have arrived in Siena and i've never seen lina in this state complete destroyed but we made it this was one crazy ride oh my god i can't feel my legs anymore i'm the worst bike packer ever used this is the most well deserved beer we've ever cheers
like okay suddenly the apocalypse is upon us so we were sitting at the bar over there and suddenly a storm came yeah this crazy rainstorm was pouring down an insane amount of water and our bikes with all our gear and clothes were getting completely drenched. we thought all our gear might be gone but our amazing Ortlieb bike bags were totally waterproof and all our stuff survived without worries but unfortunately for us our clothes weren't as waterproof as our Ortlieb bike bags so by the time we reached the cheapest guest house that we could find we were completely soaked. we're soaked and we're ready to feel clean and warm again.
oh my gosh we're so ready. Lina needs a bed we both need a shower well the most definitely yes we both need a bed. so this is our room I'll give you a view there is very simple very basic. and I'm just going to sleep here and get up early next morning get to Rome but I'm going to take a shower because i really need it even a bath and a toilet good morning. hello we're doing the same routine as we always do packing up putting everything in our Ortlieb bike bags, which always take some time. because we're very sleepy in the morning we are not a morning person unlike Paddy we wish he was here but we did get a good night's rest which was worth 40 euros.
room sweep! we do a room sweep everywhere because we forget a ton of stuff so we check out under the bed we check found in the pillow it's all uphill from here i want to kill all the hills we're on a bike in Siena who would have thought we actually managed to the old town of Siena is looking to be a good prelude to Rome the city center here is just filled with historic buildings beautiful statues and old churches and also a lot of tourists even in the early mornings like today and if you look closely there are a lot of references to Rome like this statue of the Capitoline wall which resembles the legend of the two children who were raised by a wolf and later founded Rome but the most famous part of Siena must be the stunning piazza
del campo well sienna was well worth that really challenging bike ride. like I'm so happy we made it here yeah it was two days of excruciating uphill downhills but viewing this really old but beautiful monumental town i would say really worth it. yeah up next we're going to Rome we're going to the eternal city filled with even more history and we have nothing prepared so nothing like we don't even know where we're going to sleep tonight. but we do have a few challenges in mind of things we'd like to do and see in Rome so we have an hour to get to our train yeah we'll see you there thank you siena. the train station!
I think this might be our train. hello from the train on our way to Rome we're now on like the smallest rain we've ever been on it's a small local train and we just barely fit our bikes on and we have about four and a half hours to roam yeah let's just relax for the next four and a half hours and we're gonna see you in Rome. let's go we're now on train number two. here is Lina, here's my bike called Garibaldi and here's Lina's bike called J Balvin. this train is actually quite nice there's enough space there's space for the bikes very important and now we have an hour to our next stop and we're gonna search for a hostel. finally here
all right we found the hostel, the cheapest one that we could find in rome, it's also really close to the train station so that was a bonus. this is what it looks like hello we're sharing the room with well it's a 6-bed dorm. lina's gonna be sleeping over there. i'm gonna be sleeping over there. there's other people over there. there's an aircon which i hope is not going to freeze us tonight. yeah because i'm not going to have my sweater because we're going to do laundry because our clothes smell so bad it will probably grow feet and run away. if it's around for another day so. and then i would like to go see the Trevi fountain.
but since it's almost evening we just want to like do something today just to get a wee feel of the town we've uh dropped off our washing and we're now taking a stroll through Rome which according to Lina is the best way to get to know a city and she's right it is you don't agree no i said you were right yeah i think the best way to get to know a new place is to walk around in it i am get a wee bit lost first impressions of rome it's very busy it's very crowded the chaos on the road is even more chaotic more busy and even harder
to navigate around the milan if that is anything to like it is go by it is crazier but it's beautiful it's a beautiful i feel like every city i go to i'm like this is so beautiful yeah italy is amazing and i feel like every corner we pass by there's like old churches old buildings like it's insane so this is one of the examples a big building and how beautiful buildings here beautiful building there very nice buildings over there everywhere so we're quite impressed by rome i'm also impressed by its size it's huge so the fact that we're walking it's a little bit intimidating because we might get really lost we'll have to walk a lot haven't you learned that i will never steer
you wrong i will never steer you wrong i might steal you a bit of strain but never wrong in a week a circle well we'll be on ice yeah i think i see an influencer hot spot on the horizon legs ties did you pack my influence with this uh which one i got five yeah all of them i have to change five times and twirl we're now at one of rome's most famous tourist attractions which is called the trevi fountain and this is what it really looks like and he's known to a lot of instagrammers as well and we just want to show you what it's really like this is it look at her like oh my head hurts oh my back this is what you might not see on all the pictures online but this place is always packed
with tourists both day and night so be prepared it's insane but we nevertheless had to try the trevi fountain coin toss as well we're gonna throw in a coin in rome wow you can spare ten cents for the budget my verdict this place is very beautiful the sculptures are amazing and this fountain is very like historic a lot of meaning to it but the amount of people kind of kills it for me it draws so much like such a huge crowd and so many instagramers that yeah kind of heals the mood i thought i knew how to be an instagrammer when i came here but no doubt
this fountain is stunning but we prefer to look around for more sights to see and luckily in rome you don't have to go far sadly the coliseum isn't open at night but we kept walking around the streets of rome and we popped inside a few beautiful churches that remained open throughout the night which were pretty impressive the next morning we woke up feeling pretty bad oh no even with a good breakfast both of us felt completely wrecked and a little bit sick but despite all of that we were still fully determined to go out and explore the other side of rome today we're now in roma santiago this is the train station that is right next to the vatican which we're gonna visit today
lena's got a bit of a cold of the aircon on the trains and like the hot weather outside so the constant change and i think also from the bike ride we did the other day to vienna because like we were cycling all day we were sweating loads and then as soon as we arrived in siena like the moment we parked our bikes it was like torrential downpours and we got super wet and we had to like after that cycle to our guest house and plus the aircon so i'm just like yeah and uh my stomach is just really upset and i also think just the fatigue
of uh we're now almost was it two weeks in yeah it's that is that classic moment when you're like two weeks in and fatigue starts setting in if you're traveling like we do if you've seen the entire series so far we've done a lot of kilometers and we've done a lot but this is not going to stop us uh we just have well we just had a bit of a lane and lazy morning but um i think we're ready to discover what uh the vatican is all about here we're in italy we're in rome over there running another country it's crazy borders we were only gonna do one country in the series but apparently we're going to know what we're doing
that's what you what we get when you're traveling with a colombian you're not allowed to enter a country that's where we're going turns out it's actually really easy to enter the vatican city they don't even check passports which if you've seen past series you know i was really relieved about me hey we made it inside we're now on saint peter's square inside this is what it looks like yeah we're inside the vatican italy is there behind those pillars and we're now inside the vatican we're now here at the pope's house hello this square is huge it's hard to like gauge the size of it because it's just the buildings
around it are just so huge with all amazing sculptures and uh yeah pretty cool i've actually thought it was gonna be busier but since it's still not busy we came here like every moment but um pretty relatively quiet we still have a long way to go but it's moving quite fast the vatican city is actually the smallest country in the world a walk around its border would only be three kilometers long but it's been an independent country for almost a hundred years now with the pope ruling as its monarch over a population of just 825 people these days this small country is chocked full with the world's most holy catholic churches and
shrines though such as the saint peter's basilica which we've just entered but also the sistine chapel and the vatican museums all of which feature some of the world's most famous paintings and sculptures it's so huge and it's filled with artwork gorgeous statues everywhere marble and it's so large like look how high up it is like this is the smallest dome there's an even one above the altar that's even bigger this is crazy you spend here an entire day looking at all the artwork it's very impressive and for an extra 8 euros you can climb up the highest dome which is staggering 135 meters high one of the world's highest domes and designed by michelangelo himself for an additional
two euros you can take up an elevator to save yourself a hassle but we're cheap so we took the stairs something tells me i'm gonna be afraid are you okay even though i was [__] myself at this side it really was worth all the stress if you're claustrophobic you wouldn't like the corridors and stairs inside this massive structure but it really is ingeniously designed i'm gonna stick to the walls no entice we made it all the way up the top we did how are you feeling uh a bit we'd be better now but uh in the beginning i was shaking yeah they're so close to be able to be on the top of the basilica yeah infuse amazing
surreal i thought it was quite expensive like eight euros but looking at the experience i'm like yeah it's worth it yeah he was amazing really good worth it yeah but uh don't do it hungry yeah all those stairs are making us hungry so now we're to try and budget here a cheap lunch yeah here we're going to go find some lunch we have no idea where to go but we'll let you know where we end up yeah by the time we descended all those narrow stairs and made it out it was already way past midday and finding an affordable restaurant inside or close to the vatican was proving to be impossible so by the time we found some food we were completely dead and crashed we just had lunch and we were
supposed to go to the 16 chapel but we decided to get a beer instead and relax for a little bit hi our batteries are spent with batteries and it's the hottest part of the day so we need some refreshments yeah some liquids escape from the heat for this time and then relax and then we'll go and visit the colosseum afterwards hi that sounds like a plan salute we're walking over to the colosseum which is all the way across town it's a 40-minute walk it's very far uh but we've come up with a good plan we're going to walk about halfway
and then we're gonna drink a beer then we're gonna walk the other half of the way yeah boom eye contact this is exactly what the doctor ordered no the doctor ordered ibuprofen yeah after all that walking cycling and traveling for the past 14 days we just honestly wanted to chill out and do nothing for a change here on the budgeteers we want to show you the real side of travel unfiltered and without the glamour and we still want to do as much as possible but today just wasn't such a day we're on our way to the colosseum right now it's just that just it's a stray in front of us it's right in front of one of us the
only downside is that we've spent too much drinking beers and the second downside is that the beers here are crazy expensive we forgot to ask for the price because the food here like yeah the food is pretty cheap it's really cheap like it's cheaper than milan yeah it's it's like an average i would say of six euros a meal which is fairly cheap now the beers here are the same price there's six euros for a beer we might be too late to like visit the colosseum so we hope we're still allowed to enter so with the sun fading away we rushed to the ticket office in the hope of entering with the last round of visitors
well as you might have guessed we've missed the colosseum we're too late to enter but never worry we're gonna try again tomorrow morning early morning that's why we're going back to our hostel now so early give our buddies a rest after two weeks on the road finally i have like a quiet night early night and then be the first ones at the entrance at the coliseum tomorrow money can't buy you happiness but it can buy gelato that makes me pretty happy well set very well good morning guys good morning we made it today to the colosseum we made it inside yes so we're here and we're heading in right now we're super excited to see it one piece of
information though you have to reserve and it's best to book online for these things we didn't know we just researched that yesterday but so if you come do buy a ticket online and you have to like reserve a time slot yeah luckily there was still time for us so we're in we're here now we're in and we're gonna check out the colosseum yeah we were so happy to finally make it inside of the colosseum on our last day in rome we would not have wanted to miss this one because the colosseum is one of the seven wonders of the world it's the largest amphitheater ever built and it's one of the most iconic remnants of
the great roman empire it was used for great public spectacles and gladiator fights and it seated 50 000 spectators for free by the way and walking around inside this amazing structure makes you realize how big it is and how crazy that it still stands to this day to be honest i guess not having bueno i can only give my opinion not having grown up in europe it just feels incredibly surreal to be here because you know like you learn about the coliseum in history books and in school and it's it's it's really surreal but even for me well that's why i was like wow this place is huge yeah and it was built 1942 years ago how did they do it's crazy nice crazy so yeah so we're just walking around
we had like bought a ticket which actually allowed us to go over there as well which was just a little bit more expensive we were like three euros more expensive or so and we're like yeah like well we'll just check all of this out as well like we want to like get the full tour let's say apparently we missed an exit and now because it's one way we're not allowed to go back they won't let us go up the stairs they're like yeah you had to go when you were upstairs you had to go down a different set of stairs and we're like okay can we just go back up the stairs and they said no it's one way this place is huge and they've created a maze inside that you need to follow we missed one exit and now we're like so we messed up still it was about 28 euros to visit this place um
which is a pretty steep price especially for our budget yeah but yeah if you hold the title of one of the seven world wonders you kind of like need to do it i think it's worth it i know and i love this place as well every like the history behind this yeah this is almost 2 000 years of history definitely yeah worth it we're well worth the money yeah and unlike mess up like that and unlike the taj mahal that we visited in series 3 which is also a world wonder this is actually a lot less crowded plato bye colosseum my mind having seen the colosseum our time in rome was up we spent two days here and spent a
total budget of 160 euros each trains and hostels included that means our total budget count is now well over halfway but since we want to make it all the way to the south of italy and experience all kinds of different things we needed to rush and jump on a train towards the next city fast we just made it on the train and we just barely made it in time barely it isn't understood yeah didn't get any time yeah for sure it luckily uh but now we're on our way to napoli which should take another three hours at least yeah three and a half something right now and as you can tell the trains are we be crowded we're now in a napoli city it's still very sunny hi it's about five o'clock
we have to make our way towards the ferry that is going to take us to sicily all the way overnight which just means that we have two hours to find something to eat and make our way across short town taimi let's go to the left wow let's go there thank you uh the ferries should be just around the corner all right i'm gonna show you guys the fairy that we're boarding i told ty's it's not a ferry it's a cruise ship that's a very italian city it's massive i'm gonna fit a lengthy dungeon that's actually quite spacious i thought it was going to be like a tight squeeze but it's quite large we have more space than in a regular home go on give a few kicks go on oh yeah there we go so i'm like almost two meters good news there is a bathroom
we didn't know if there was actually gonna be one what does it look like wow it's massive well there's an actual full shower and toilet in here i'm a seasick already oh that reminds me to take my pills so this was about 40 euros each and if you like calculate it we would spend the amount of money on a train and on a hostel so now we got it both in one we save half a day of travel at least i think we save eight hours of travel and we save on accommodation guys lina has not had bowel movement since when was the last time since we left trivizo or was it somewhere in tuscany patty would
love this patty would love this ship patty would love this ship oh there's an announcement this is what it looks like cozy i had a nice refreshing shower and now we're gonna explore this huge ship that's goalie now let's go oh i think that's the restaurant part wait this is a big ship i love it what is it ty's a wee big ship hi i think everyone had like the similar idea of like checking out the city one last time it's dark by now but they're bringing in the last trucks and then the ship can leave now over there you have a lot smaller ferry and over there you can see very fancy cruise ships so there is a bar on board but since
we're budgeteers we did were able to get beers before we got on the ship cheers hey cheers the sun is rising we wanted to like see the sunrise on the ship yeah and um it's it's starting to be amazing i don't know if we're gonna get to see the whole sunrise because this boat is arriving a lot earlier than we thought yeah we're already seeing uh palermo and sicily here in the background yeah it's amazing but we loved this ferry ride we were very tired we fell asleep like patty at 10 last night and that's late for penny yeah that's late for patty early for us you would have loved to hear me a good beer and
then immediately go to sleep it was i slept like a baby yeah me too i'm really excited to see sicily from what i've read and what i've seen it looks like it's gonna be very different from everything else we've seen so i'm super excited to see the south of italy but i'm i'm really grateful to have seen rome see all those tourist attractions even though we don't normally go to a lot of tourist attractions on the show like i just feel like when you're in a city like rome you have to and it's worth the money it was just amazing and surreal honestly i thought we would spend even more money although we did we spent a lot we spent although we spent a lot i thought it was going
to be even more expensive so thanks for watching this episode and thanks for watching our entire italy series uh we are really looking forward to discovering sicily so come and join us in the next episode yeah and uh we have to run because if we don't pack our bags right now then we're not going to be able to join you on the next episode and that'd be a little weird because we're the talents yeah that was that needed to be sent the talent is that the word i'm pretty silent what's the opposite of talent you
