If anyone would have told me a year ago that I would be living in Italy, I would have never believed them. Fast forward to today, and now 3 weeks have gone by since Jared and I have arrived to Rome, yet it still hasn’t hit me that I am living in Italy and I certainly can’t believe we have been here for a whole 3 weeks already. Where does the time go??

It was a little over a year ago that Jared and I came to visit Europe for the first time, can you guess that we instantly fell in love with it here? From the language, to the food, the culture, architecture, it’s no wonder its the 5th most visited country in the world-Italy has everything you want and more.

We are currently living in Rome, the capital and largest city of Italy with the largest population. We got really lucky with our first apartment here. It’s in a perfect location close to the Vatican Museum so we can pretty much walk anywhere from here without any problems. Normally our day to day here consists of a morning workout, getting some work done on the computer, and then venturing out later in the evening. We try to avoid going out between the hours of 12-4 because of the intense heat, so we tend to wait for it to cool down some before leaving the house. It works out as most businesses are often closed at this time anyway, which can last from 90 minutes to two hours. This is called riposo in Italy.

Pictured above: Dinner on the first night we arrived to Italy (spaghetti and wine-what else?)

The first three weeks here have been about adjusting and getting used to our new surroundings. Obviously the language barrier is a challenge but we are slowly progressing with the help of Rosetta Stone and a language app called, Duolingo. Besides that, not having a car forces us to walk everywhere, which has been a great way to get to know the city and marvel at the beautiful architecture that lays on every street corner of Rome.

We have visited quite a few places since arriving here. From passing by the Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, Vatican Museum-which are the more well known tourist attractions-but also wandering about other nooks and crannies of the city as nearly every corner here is Instagram friendly. One of our favorites so far is the Vatican museum. The art and detail is absolutely breathtaking and I highly recommend checking it out if you visit Rome, oh and the price wasn’t too bad either-only 16 euro!

Since we know absolutely no one here, we take advantage of the meetings/events hosted by expat groups and that has really allowed us to meet and connect with other English speakers. The expat meetings consist of people from all walks of life coming together, not all necessarily from an English speaking country, but from all over the world. We just recently went to our third event this past week and so far have met people from Egypt, Naples(Italy), England, Australia, and Germany to name a few. It’s so great to unite with others who are going through the exact same thing we are-living in another country with no friends or family to lean on.

The weather is the hottest around this time of year. It easily reaches high 90’s everyday, and since there is no breeze, like we were used to in Miami, it actually feels like 100. Just imagine that plus walking around for up to 10 miles in one day in crowded areas…it gets exhausting. Nonetheless, we have started to learn our way around using public transportation, i.e. bus and train. I have never really been one to use public transportation seeing that I’ve been driving and had my own car for the past 10 years, but I do enjoy not having to rely on a car and making those monthly car payments. I sure don’t miss that one bit!

Jared and I hope to do more traveling around Europe next month, since we haven’t been anywhere in Europe except Italy. A few spots on our radar are Barcelona, Nice, and of course, Paris. Have you been to any of these? If so, what should we see/do while we’re there?

We are super excited to be taking on this journey and we hope you’ll follow along with us. To see more detailed posts on our time here, visit our travel blog, http://www.whatifweblog.com and make sure to  check out the video above if you haven’t already done so.

Ciao beauties,
Estrella