Planning for Rome

Believe it or not, I’ve never been to Rome. I’ve made two trips to Italy, but not to Rome.

I’m making up for it by spending ten full days in Rome at the beginning of October. But planning for my Rome visit has been more challenging than any other trip I’ve ever taken.

This is the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place in all my travels. And I also have a very long list of things to see and do. How to organize them efficiently without wearing myself out is a monumental task.

Step One: Booking Tours

This was the easiest part.

There were certain things I knew I wanted to see, and some of those require advance booking or are better seen with a guide. So here are the things I’ve booked:

• Wonders of Rome Small Group Walking Tour (Piazza Venezia, Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II, Fontana Trevi, Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio di Loyola, Pantheon, Piazza Navona)
• Premium Colosseum Tour with Roman Forum and Palatine Hill
• Vatican Key Master’s Tour
• Ghetto & Jewish Museum Tour
• Pasta-making Class
• Borghese Gallery
• Ostia Antica Tour
• Trastevere at Sunset Food and Wine Tour
• Peter Grimes at Teatro dell’Opera di Roma
• Tivoli Tour

Step Two: What else to see?

This part wasn’t really hard either, but it’s what is leading to the real challenge: organizing and prioritizing.

It was easy to come up with a list of other things worth seeing in Rome. I used a variety of sources to do this: my favorite travel guru’s website as well as his Rome guidebook, which I have on my Kindle, and the other travelers who post on his travel forum, websites such as Atlas Obscura and Nomadic Matt, recommendations from Instagram, and my own (albeit limited) knowledge about Rome.

And I ended up with about fifty things.

Some of these are pass-by places: a spot to get a good view or to enjoy the ambience for a few minutes and take some photos before moving on. Many are churches that might take anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour depending on what there is to see inside. And some are museums where I might want to spend several hours.

So how do I figure out the best way to see as much as I can in the time I have without wearing myself out? 

Step Three: Organizing

I always use Wanderlog to organize my travel. That’s where I track all my flights, my lodging, my daily activities, and my budget.

But in planning for Rome, I found that I needed more structure. While Wanderlog is my favorite tool for tracking travel plans, it’s not the right tool to help me figure out when to do what.

So I made a spreadsheet using Excel.

On one tab I put all my pre-booked activities into a grid.

Then I added a tab and listed all the sights — churches, monuments, museums, and more — that I’m interested in seeing. There’s more than fifty of them!

I don’t expect that I’ll be able to see everything, but I created a Google map and pinpointed them all. (That’s my map at the top of the page.) And I identified what they are near so I can coordinate all my sightseeing by neighborhood.

I still have some work to do. I need to figure out how long each sight will take. Museums might take an hour or two. Churches might take a little less than that depending on how much art work can be found inside. And some things are just places I’ll pass by, take a photo, and move on.

As I say, I won’t be able to see everything on my list. But I want to make sure I don’t miss something because I passed it by without realizing, or because it was just around the corner.

I have a few weeks before I leave, so I think I’ll be able to finish planning for Rome before then.