 Welcome to the Italy vlog. So in October my mom brother and I spent two weeks in Italy and if you don't know my mom is actually 100% Italian and a lot of her family still lives there and this was our first time going as a family and it was the first time in 30 years since my mom had been to Italy. So finally convinced her to go and our first stop was in Rome. So this was our first day. We literally got to our hotel, dropped off our stuff and then immediately met up with my mom's cousin and went out to go see all of the historical sites. It was actually the first Sunday of the month, the day that we got there, which means all the museums and everything was free admission. So we had to take advantage of that and then after we did tons of walking and sightseeing we went and got dinner, pasta and then gelato of course and then we went back to our hotel. It's actually pretty rare for European buildings to have elevators but ours did. It had this adorable retro little elevator. It was so cute. Ow! Hello vlog. It's day one, yeah technically day one, of our Italy trip. We are in Rome. We flew in this morning and it's been an exhausting day because our flight left last night at 6 p.m. We got here at 8 a.m. Italy time, 2 a.m. hour time at home and then we just went straight out, met up with my mom's cousin and we've just been seeing all the sites and then we got dinner and gelato and we walked a lot. We did over 21,000 steps, nine miles of walking. So my feet are killing me. We're all just hot and tired and cranky and we got back to our hotel room and we've been trying to mess with the air conditioner and it's not working. So it's kind of hot in our room and everyone's just not in the best mood but just wanted to say hi and start the vlog. Hopefully we can get a decent night sleep and start fresh tomorrow so I will see you in the morning. Rome day two! This is the fit. I got my comfy sneakers on this time so hopefully my feet won't hurt as much. This is the view from outside the hotel. So cute! We're gonna go get some coffee. Absolutely gorgeous. Rome day two. Still trying to adjust to the time difference. We got up at like noon but uh... You got up at noon. Shut up. I got up at noon. And now it's almost 3.30. We got coffee, did some walking and now we are trying to do lots of shopping. So we're down by, we're like all the good shopping is. There are tons of like designers and I don't know. So we're just gonna walk around and shop, see what they got here. Probably get something to eat soon. It's really hot here especially in the sun. The sun is stir-wrong but it's a beautiful day. Happy to be here. The end of day two. We just got back to the hotel room. We literally shopped all day. That's all we did. Shop, eat. So let's do a little haul. Okay first thing I have. I got this. This is not very good. Oh there we go. Okay so first I got this leather vest. So cute. I'm so excited about this. Adorable. That was from a little local boutique. The bag doesn't even have the name on it. And then the rest of the stuff I got was just from like typical chain stores because the area that we were in was just a lot of chain stores, designers, name brand and whatnot. Tomorrow we're gonna go check out some local shops but I got a pair of Ray-Bans. These are so cute. I'm so excited. Then I got a couple things from Zara. This like cut off, cropped, whatever, leather, shirt, jacket. And then I just got a plain t-shirt, plain long sleeve shirt. And then we went to H&M. I got this dress. That's everything I got today. Let's see what you got. Shirt. Oh my god. Okay show them. Show it. Hold everything up. Oh yeah nice. Cargos. Okay from H&M. All your clothes was from H&M right? Yeah. Pants. Nice. Pants. Okay nice. Pants. Very nice. Shirt. Uh-huh. Love it. Shirt. Love. Wallet. Wallet. Yep. Let's see. Real Italian leather. Genuine Italian leather. Some you broke motherfuckers don't know shit about. Okay and? And dunks. High tops. If you don't like the high tops, eat a frank. Okay. Very nice. Can you tell the story about what happened to the pants that you brought on the trip? The first pair of the zipper broke before I put them on. The second pair of the button broke before I put them on. No you had them on. Yeah but I didn't button them. I don't want to make it sound like I'm a fat ass. I went to go buy it and just fell. Literally fell on the ground. So two pairs of pants that he packed had to just get tossed. Well good thing you got so many new ones. Let's see what you got. A wallet. A pink wallet. With a button. Very cute. Hi good morning. It's day three in Rome. I wait. Is it day three? It's Wednesday. One, two. No it's day four. I didn't vlog anything yesterday because we it was just kind of a repeat of the day before. We've just been walking around like every day we get up we go get coffee and then we just walk around the city. And we've just the last two days have just been doing a lot of shopping and yeah just kind of taking in the sights. We haven't like gone into any like museums or anything like that the last two days. So you didn't miss much. But it's just hard to like we're walking so so much our feet are killing us by the end of the day. And it's so hot. Oh my god it's so hot out. So you know carrying everything and then yesterday we ended up doing a lot of shopping. So we had a bunch of bags that we were carrying so it's a lot to juggle like trying to pull out the camera and all that. You get it. But I'm enjoying Rome. It's beautiful. Today's our last day in Rome. We're leaving tomorrow to go to our next destination and I'm excited. I'm ready. It's beautiful here but I'm like all right I'm ready to keep it moving. Let's see the next place. But today we are meeting back up with my mom's cousin that we met up with the first day and then we're gonna try to go over to the Vatican. I don't know if we're gonna actually be able to get in because from what he was saying the lines there are crazy crazy long. So we'll see the situation when we get there but he said otherwise there's a lot of stuff just like in Vatican City or in that area that is you know worth seeing. So I guess we're gonna hang out on that side and I'm excited because that is over like across the other side of the river and I'm really excited to just go over there because I feel like it's probably gonna be so beautiful. Here's our outfit. So yesterday when I didn't vlog and we did some shopping they got a Louis belt. Let's see up close. Wow. Beautiful. Amazing. Let's what's what's the full fit. Back it up. Back it up. Wow. Pants. H&M. You're supposed to say where everything's from. I don't remember you. It's from this one. Okay. Wow very nice. Chains. Italy. No. Oh really? Yeah. Okay show mine. New shirt from Zara. Dress underneath is she in. It's like a really cute milk maid. Don't show my shoes. That's not really part of this thing but desperate times you know. Yeah. I do not want to stuff my feet into sneakers anymore. I want coffee. We gotta get a good picture today. Yeah. This battery's about to die. Okay. So Thursday was another travel day. We took the train from Rome to Formia where we were gonna get on the ferry but before we did that we had to stop at the McDonald's there. I think it's so interesting to visit McDonald's in different countries to see how different the menu is. They had so many different things and the McCafe area was like an actual bakery cafe with like legit coffee and pastries. They had cheese fries. They had a chicken Big Mac. They had these little bites. I forget what they were called but they were almost kind of like a little mini hot pocket. Very interesting. Very good. Then we went over to hop on the ferry so that we could ride over to Ponza. It was so beautiful down in this area. Lots of mountains and beautiful water. The ferry ride was I believe about an hour or so. I couldn't get over how beautiful and blue the water was and then we arrived in Ponza. So this is a little island off the coast kind of between Rome and Naples and this is where my mom's entire family is from and it was just so surreal being here because I've she took me here when I was a baby but obviously I don't remember that and I'm just growing up you know my grandparents would always talk about this place. I would always see pictures of it and it was just really cool to actually be there in person and be there with my family. So we stopped in the grocery store to grab a few things because we were going to be staying in an actual apartment while we were in Ponza and again it's just cool to see the different things that they have in the stores. Then we walked over to the apartment where we were staying and it's just it's crazy how different and beautiful it is there. So here's a little tour of the apartment we were staying in. This actually is owned by my mom's cousin who spent majority of the trip with us. We are now in Ponza. Finally we were traveling most of the day. We had to go take the train from Rome to Formia and then from there we took the ferry. We're staying in our cousin's apartment that he has like as a rental so it's nice. It's like really close to everything like the main center of town. And it's beautiful here. I'll show more tomorrow obviously because by the time we got here it was already like what almost like four. So we didn't do much exploring so far. We just dropped off our stuff, rested a little bit and went to a grocery store, got a few essentials, coffee and Nick is not feeling well so and we're just kind of like tired and beat so we figured it would be a good night to just stay in. We got some stuff at the store to make so I'm just gonna make some pasta, got some tomato sauce, zucchini and Parmesan. Oh I also got prosecco. How does it feel for you to be here? Amazing. I could stay here forever. All of my mom's family is from here and she hasn't been here since I was a baby so it's been 30 years. It's amazing. But it's pretty cool. We walked by a bunch of stuff and she was like oh I remember that. A lot of her family still live here. It's crazy and like walking around there's a lot of places like we stopped and got gelato at this place that is owned by one of your cousins. Yeah in laws. It's just such a small island and it's just crazy to think that like these are where our roots are and like growing up my grandparents always talked about this place and always were telling me that I need to come here and blah blah blah and I mean I was here when I was like one but but finally here as an adult it's very cool. Very exciting. Anyway that's the update. Tomorrow we are meeting back up with some family and we're gonna do more exploring and I think go out on the boat. Maybe go swimming. The weather here is so beautiful. I kind of now that we're here I kind of wish we were staying here longer. Do you agree? No. Well I told you I could stay here with the dog and he could go with you guys. No I'm excited for the rest of the trip too but and Rome Rome was beautiful and I really enjoyed seeing everything and I'm so glad that I finally went but I'm like I would choose this over the world. Check it out. It's high evolution machine. Oh yeah. We have a washing machine in the apartment so we're gonna do some laundry as well. We got some detergent here. We got this at the store too. Some dish soap. Here's my prosecco. Our coffee. Sugar. Got some barbecue chips and then this stuff is her breakfast in the morning. Christmas pastries. Camomile tea. Some juice and the stuff. Beauty foam. The most important meal of the day. Oh yeah. We have to do our outfit of the day. I am the dress from I don't know I think forever 21 maybe cropped denim jacket from Zara. This bad I think is H&M maybe and then I'm wearing these sandals from Target. Oh and I almost forgot my sunglasses. I ended up swapping the ones I got in Rome for same style but in black. This is so cute. So the apartment is like I don't know it's so interesting here I don't even know how to explain it but there's just like these walkways because it's just all like these houses just like stacked up on a mountain basically. So as you're walking around it's like these little stone hallways almost and then a lot of steps so yeah okay let's go. My brother is not doing too well. He started to not feel well last night when we got here and he's yeah so I don't know hopefully if he just like stays home and sleeps and rest today he'll be better for tomorrow. We were gonna go out on the boat and all that today but don't want him to miss out on that so just me and my mom and we are just gonna go walk around to go exploring we're gonna see if we can go visit her aunt. Oh is it up here? So yeah that's a lot of these steps like you're in a cave. Well yeah look at this view from up here and that's our apartment right there right? Those windows on the bottom. Over there where you see like that sailboat that's where Debbie's house is and that's on that side. Can you imagine stepping out your front door and this is your view? Police station but it used to be a school. I think so down this way so if it wasn't this one it was that one but that doesn't mean that one was my great grandmother's old house. There was a picture of you and Jojo in the garage. It was right here. Wow. Back there. See where that green whatever thing is? That was a cave where they had chickens. Wow. They made it into an apartment. Oh my god cute and that used to be a chicken coop cave. Interesting. Wow. And all this here belongs I'm sure still to Nana's brother's family and there was a path that you could go down there and at the bottom there was a big rock and people would go jumping into the water and scuba diving. That is crazy. Could you imagine living on that? Damn. What the time we brought you here because this is where they used to take the babies local and they say because see how it's so still and calm and then we found out that the water was like contaminated or had some kind of bacteria and nobody told us of course but there was other people with babies too you know and then within a couple of days you started getting all these like listers and stuff. Oh my god that's her husband. My cousin's husband. This is how they bring water to the island. So weird. Okay you didn't finish telling the story about my sickness. Oh yeah so we used to bring you here and you had your how do you call it shovel and you would go there and put it in the water and you kept putting it in your mouth and I didn't know. I thought it was cute and then I found out that the water was contaminated and that's how you got sick. What was it that I had? Empatigo I think it's called. Interesting. It's the same as strep from the way they explained it to me but it's on your skin. It's the same virus whatever yeah as strep. So those bubbles that you had on your arm are like the bubbles that you would have in your throat if you had strep. Interesting. I don't know about any more but you would see. Oh my god beautiful and you can see straight down to the bottom. I don't know about any more but you would see the tourists like come over here and jump in the water and then they would go on that rock right there. Oh yeah and sunbathe. A vending machine in the street with beer and cigarettes. This was easily my favorite day of the entire trip. We spent pretty much the entire day on our cousin's boat and he just took us all around the island to all of the different beaches and we just swam all day and got some of the most beautiful views, beautiful photos. It's just truly surreal. I mean I've never been anywhere like this ever in my life and it it's crazy to think that this even exists. Like the water was so blue and so clear you could see all the way straight down to the bottom. Then the following day was another boat day. We went on a larger tour boat actually and they do tours for tourists all during the summer season and then this was the final day where they had all of the locals come out on the boat and they gave us a tour of the entire island all the way around and then also brought us to another smaller island that was close by and we just spent the entire day on the boat and it was really cool being with locals and it turned out that I was actually related to a lot of them so which isn't surprising. It's a really small island. I think the population is only like 3,000 and the majority of the people who live there don't even stay there year round because I mean it's so tiny but this was a really fun day. Again super beautiful. They actually gave us food too on the boat. They gave us pasta, wine, we had coffee and desserts and then we got to stop at the beach over on the smaller island that was close by and just hung out there for a couple hours. The next morning we got up early to get back on the ferry and we headed over to Naples and I'm not gonna lie when we first got there I wasn't really blown away. I just kind of felt like I was in Manhattan. It just felt like any other city a lot of people but once we headed over to the side where the water is I liked it a lot better. It was really pretty over there. The plan was to just walk around Naples, get pizza of course and then go over to Pompeii but they actually had a public transportation strike going on this day so we weren't able to do that unfortunately but we did get pizza. My brother actually got this deep fried pizza which was pretty interesting. It was good. My mom got a margarita, I got a spicy pizza and then after lunch we went over to Gambrinus which is a really famous bakery in Naples. So you know we had to get some goodies of course. It was delicious packed with people but the pastries were so good and then the next day we headed over to Florence. Florence room tour and here's what the bathroom looks like. Bidet of course. A little shower stone. Hair dryer. So cute. I love the little courtyard. Out here so pretty and they serve breakfast over here in the morning. After we got settled into our hotel room we went around the corner to get some lunch at this restaurant that they actually recommended to us at the hotel. It was really good. I had to get the ragu because that's kind of what the Tuscany area is known for and then we just walked around. To be completely honest the main points of our trip and what we really were going Italy for was Ponsa and Rome but we figured while we're there we may as well go see a couple other cities too so Florence wasn't really too planned out. We just kind of booked the hotel and then got there so we didn't have anything planned or anything in mind of what we specifically wanted to go see. We didn't purchase tickets for anything ahead of time. We were just kind of winging it so we just walked around. We went over down by the water and then we had to go over to the Michelangelo piazza. That's up at the top. You get the most beautiful view overlooking all of Florence but it's a hike. It's very steep. My poor mom was suffering but once we got up there it was so worth it and it was the perfect time of day. We got there right as the sun was about to set and look at these views. The sky was so beautiful and it was so nice because we were able to get the view of Florence in the daylight and then also at night when it was all lit up. The next morning we had complimentary breakfast at our hotel which was nice. I have to say though the breakfast in Italy is very different than what we're used to in America but majority of our time in Florence we were just kind of aimlessly walking around and just exploring and seeing what was there. Florence is a really small city so it's very easy to just walk the entire thing but I will say if I ever go back I'm going to plan ahead of time and purchase tickets online because it was so packed. We had walked by where the statue of David was and I mean the line was insane. It was impossible to get in. It's Florence day three. I don't think I vlogged anything yesterday. We haven't really done too much since we've been here. Florence sucks. Oh my god. My brother is not a huge fan. It's very beautiful but it is so warming with tourists like even worse than Rome which is surprising to me for some reason. I don't know but it's crazy like every single person you walk past here is just speaking like American English and it just feels weird. Like it doesn't really feel like we're in Italy. I just think it's the time of year. Like if we were to come at a different time of year where when there's less people it would be really nice but it's just so packed everywhere and anything that's of any significance it's like impossible to go unless you want to just stand in line for hours. It feels like Disneyland kind of. It's just I don't know. So we've just been kind of like walking around looking at stuff from the outside. We haven't gone like into any churches or anything like that because again the lines are just crazy and we've just been kind of like eating, getting drinks, just trying to enjoy being here while we're here. We do have a wine tour booked so we're walking to that now the meeting point for that and we're going to go out into Tuscany and go tour some wineries and do wine tasting. Beautiful setup. We haven't seen good morning. Fade goodbye for the last day of Rome. It's our last day in Rome. It's day on the trip in general. I feel like a hot ass on the battery's dying. Fantastic. Um but I would look at this. I have covered mosquito bites. They're so itchy. My face is starting to break out. I just feel gross. I can't wait to go home. I mean this trip has been amazing. Yes. Such a great experience and so beautiful and I'm so grateful that I got to do it and that I finally dragged my mom to Italy but two full weeks go on and I'm done. I'm ready to go home, be back in my routine, not live out of a suitcase anymore. But yesterday I didn't vlog anything because it was just too hectic because it was a troubled day. We got breakfast in the morning in Florence and then we went to the train station and took a train back to Rome and then when we got here we just immediately went out to get dinner and then we came straight back to the hotel room and went to sleep because we were exhausted. Today is gonna be a pretty chill day. I'm just getting ready now. We're gonna go get some coffee and then at one o'clock one of my mom's other cousins who lives in Rome is coming to meet up with us and we're gonna go get lunch with her and her son and then my brother and I have tattoo appointments and then we're gonna come back here and go to bed early because then we have a car picking us up at the hotel at six in the morning to take us to the airport. Still dreaming about the food and coffee in Italy but after we had our little breakfast we met up with our cousins. They took us to a restaurant for lunch. My brother and cousin got steak. My mom and I split the carbonara and then we also split this delicious tiramisu. Oh my god. Still dreaming about it to this day. It was so good and then our cousin drove us to our tattoo appointments so we just finished off our trip by getting tattoos and then just spent the rest of the evening with our cousins a little bit more before heading back to our hotel because we had to pack everything up since we were leaving pretty early the next morning and yeah the next morning we had a car service pick us up from the hotel and take us to the airport and flew home about it was about a nine hour flight back home so that was it. I had such a good trip. I definitely need to go back to Italy soon but I hope that you guys enjoyed this vlog. Thank you so much for watching and I will see you in my next video soon.