Holiblog: The Rome Edition

For my husband Tim’s 28th birthday I bought us a trip to Rome. As you may know from previous blogs, Italy is our favourite country and Tim’s favourite Italian city that we’ve visited is Rome, it’s been 7 years since our first visit.

Read on to see what we got up to!


Day One


It was a early start for us to begin our Rome adventure, from Gatwick!

This meant we had a whole day to start exploring.

But, first lunch! And an ice cream stop at the highest rated ice cream place in Rome, it didn’t disappoint!

Trip Advisor: Best Gelato in Rome

We stumbled upon the National Museum of Rome and this was a great find. The architecture was amazing and we had a audio guide which was really interesting.

After all our exploring and walking around we had a chilled evening back at our room. We grabbed some take away pizza slices and a couple of ice cold cans of coke zero and enjoyed a them in our cosy room.


Day Two


Today we headed out early to have a look at the Colosseum. We went inside it on our last trip to Rome so this time we just went to have a look at it again from the outside, as well as the area around it.

We enjoyed a nice lunch and some ice cream before heading back for a siesta and our evening activity.

That evening we enjoyed our Italian cooking class, the first of our three planned activities for the trip.

It was originally going to be a pizza class (my husband is obsessed with pizza and this trip was planned by me for his birthday) but they changed the menu to pasta, as a summer alternative. Even so we had a great time!

We made pasta, a similar one to tagliatelle, Gnocci and then for dessert we made an amazing summer berries and white chocolate tiramisu. It was so good and it was so fun to cook proper pasta. You can really tell the difference.


Day Three


I think this was my favourite day of the holiday.

We had a nice early start to have a look round Palentine hill and the Roman Forum. We missed out on seeing these last time as we didn’t get there early enough and it is horrendous in the heat!

So, we made our way there nice and early and spent the morning having a look at the amazing Roman Ruins.

For lunch we headed over to the highest rated pizza place in Rome and it was delicious. This was my favourite meal and the man who owned the shop was so helpful and friendly. It’s a small little shop but so worth it.

Trip Advisor: Best Pizza in Rome

In the evening we headed to Piazza Campo de’ Fiori to have our second planned activity, a ‘By night walking tour of Rome’ Our guide was absolutely brilliant, born and raised in Rome so very knowledgable.

We saw so many different sights that we hadn’t seen before, such as the Pantheon and my favourite, the Trevi fountain (Which is SO beautiful) and much bigger than I expected. I’m so glad we got to see it this time.


Day Four


On day four our planned activity was an evening walking food tour, unfortunately it was cancelled so we had another think about what to do.

In the end we booked a morning trip, including a guided tour of the Vatican city. The tour included access to the Vatican museum, the Cistine Chapel & St Peter’s Basillca.

These places were all amazing and the artwork, tapestrys and architecture were amazing, as well as the history.

After a delicious lunch of Caprese salad, Pizza and the most amazing tiramisu we headed home for another afternoon siesta!

In the evening we took a stroll down to the Colosseum, after dinner, to have a look at it all lit up at night. It looked beautiful!


Day Five


On our final day we didnt fly out until the evening so, we wanted to make the most of our last day.

At breakfast we had a look on Viator to see what we could do.

As we didn’t make pizza at the previous cooking class we booked onto a pizza class for midday.

We stumbled across the Spanish Steps whilst we were looking for the cooking class location which was cool! Another landmark to tick off.

The cooking class was brilliant, with a lovely group of Americans & a Canadian lady. I really enjoyed making an authentic pizza in Rome and I loved seeing Tim make his favourite cuisine too.

They were really tasty!! A great lunch for our last day.

One of the other members of the cooking class mentioned a 5D experience that they were visiting later that day and as we had no other plans we thought we would check it out too!

We went for the full package 5D experience watching the history of Rome, the evolution of life and we looked around Roman landmarks with a VR headset on.

Once we had done all this it was a good time to slowly amble back to Termini to grab our bags and get the coach to the airport.

A great end to the holiday.

We had a brilliant time in Rome and I would 100% recommend it to anyone thinking of visiting Italy, especially if you are a first timer as there is so much to see and do.

& of course the food is amazing.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this little post about our trip!

I wonder what next years Holiblogs will be about!? Time to start thinking for 2020.


Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂

Holiblog 2: The food 🍕🍝

Food is of course one of the reasons why we love Italy, pizza, pasta, gelato, what more do you need right?!

Thankfully we have been able to sample all of these whilst we have been on our honeymoon but Sardinian food has been quite different to what we’ve had in Italy before as well, lots of seafood 🐟🐙

The hotel offers a buffet which has an amazing selection, let’s start with breakfast! Anything you could possibly think of to have for breakfast is on offer and you can go up as many times as you like, it doesn’t get much better than that!

They do a cooked breakfast which is nice alongside the continental options which is the only option at alot of hotels. They’ll even make omelettes for you with lots of yummy fillings 🍳🍞🍅

The Homemade waffles are one of my favourite bits of breakfast. I’m not normally into waffles much but these are so fresh and tasty 😋

Now dinner, they serve dinner a bit differently here but you defiantly won’t go hungry that’s for sure. 

First up, starter is a buffet, again with a huge selection to choose from! Salads, bread, seafood salads, meat, cheese & some hot bits too.

Here are some of our favourites…

Tomatoes & mozzarella (Caprese salad) and mozzarella in breadcrumbs, cheese overload but so delicious. I also really liked the squid and selection of Italian meats on offer.

After the starter you choose from 5 dishes as your ‘first plate’ usually some sort of pasta…

This is a delicious veggie lasagne we  had one night as our first plate.

Then you choose from 5 different dishes for your ‘second plate’ These are usually some sort of meat or fish…

This is a pork and sausage skewer with ratatouille.

The desserts are also in the form of a buffet too.

My favourite Italian sweet item is of course their Gelato 🍦🍧

We found a lovely ice cream place on our walk to Puerto Cervo one afternoon, it was run by a lovely and very enthusiastic American lady, here we sampled a few flavours each. Tim had fragola (strawberry), banana & watermelon. I had Nutella & coconut.

A few days ago we noticed that our hotel has its own Gelataria so we went and sampled some there too (be rude not too). Here we are eating lemon & mint choc chip.

We are half board so for lunches we have been having snacks at the hotel or looking out for places to go out to eat. We found a lovely resturant in Puerto Cervo and had some delicious tagliatelle au ragu…

This, like most meals, alongside bread rolls, is served with Sardinian bread…

It’s paper thin and usually seasoned with sea salt or rosemary, delicious.  

Yesterday (much to Tim’s delight) we found a pizzeria whilst we were on Madalina Island…

You honestly cannot beat authentic Italian food, if you’ve not been to Italy, go! Seriously.

And on that note I’m very hungry and am now going to find some lunch! 😁😋

I hope you’ve enjoyed this post, let me know. 👍👎

Until next time,

Roseanne 🙂 

The final wedding update (15) ♡

Here it is, my final wedding blog post! I can’t believe I’m saying this but it’s a just over a week since the big day, a fact that has made me feel pretty sad this week.

It was AMAZING.

The cool thing about doing this blog after the wedding is that I can include lots of pictures without ruining anything for the guests.

Apologies but it’s a long one.

The Thursday before the wedding me and Sarah started the wedding prep by getting our nails done. We got acrylics with gel polish. I them.

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The Friday before we spent all day at Wantisden Valley setting up. Although at times it was stressful I loved bringing it all together and finally seeing our vision  in the flesh.

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Here are some pictures of the venue slowly coming to life….

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The ceremony room

I loved the pink and green flowers for the chairs and the Daily Prophet programmes.

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The table decorations

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The flower centrepieces that I made from Pinterest looked fab on the tables, I was really pleased that all the hours of cutting and pinning were worth it, they added a unique and handmade twist to our table centrepieces.

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More of the venue including the photo booth & our Honeydukes themed sweet shop

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Outside the venue

It took us from 11am until 6pm when the barn closed to get everything ready but it was SO worth it and went really smoothly with all our helpers pitching in.

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The next day it was all systems go from 8.30 am! First stop, hairdressers. My friend from work left us a bottle of Bucks Fizz for us to enjoy whilst we had our hair done which was lovely. It was really nice getting our hair done professionally and to see Sarah and Roxys hair as they didnt have a trial.

My hair looked as lovely as the first time, I really started to feel like a bride when they put my veil and tiara on too.

Next stop, Charlotte’s to get ready.

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Choccy crossaints, demolished and make up beautifully applied by Demi and it was soon 12.15 and time to leave for the venue. When the car pulled up it was so much more amazing than I ever imagined. Without a doubt it was one of my favourite bits of the day ♡

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Wedding car selfie with Dad!

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I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous as I was walking down the aisle and standing doing my vows but, it was really lovely too, a special moment between me and Tim. People don’t lie when they say it’s a bit of a blur and that wasn’t just because of the tears!!

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After the ceremony me and Tim went for a short drive in the wedding car which was one of my favourite moments of the whole day, it was lovely to take some time together alone on our special day.

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Next up it was Pimms o clock, brushetta canapés and photos with our guests.

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Once we had taken all the photos it was time for the speeches and wedding breakfast.

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The speeches went down a treat as did the food.

Our caterers were the Mobile Pizzeria and the food was fantastic!! We had antipasti to start with pizzas, rosemary & garlic potatoes and salad for main. Dessert was either Eton Mess or baked apples with ginger biscuits. All delicious.
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Here is our gorgeous cake made by my mum’s friend Gill, she did such a fantastic job!! We loved it.

I saw the design for this cake in a shop window and gave that design as the basis for Gill to follow. Our little Venetian masks that we got in Venice when we got engaged looked great on top too.

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Cutting our cake

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We chose Stand by me by Ben E King as our first dance song. It was Tim’s suggestion and I thought it was a lovely and different choice for a first dance song.

I really enjoyed this too ♡ although it’s wierd everyone watching you dance and I kept standing on my dress haha.
You can’t see them, but I actually had cream sparkly converse on instead of my heels!!

All that was left to do after that was to party the night away…

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It was lovely to see more of our friends arrive in the evening and we had more yummy food from the Mobile Pizzeria, pulled pork baps and Mac n cheese.

Our DJ Paul Allen was amazing and kept us and our guests dancing all night! Me and Tim even had a game of Mr & Mrs which was a lots of fun.

Iyla (my sister Sarah & her husband Dans niece) caught our bouquet! She was so excited bless her.

At the end of the night we had our final song Never Forget by Take That and Paul let off two confetti cannons in our pink and green colour scheme, that was really cool and an awesome way to end a fantastic day!

It was the best day of our lives and was as amazing as we had hoped. The planning, preparation, money and stress were more than worth it ♡

I loved this little summary of the big day from Tim’s cousin Emma…

Tim and Roseanne became Mr and Mrs Byford with an amazing, original and heartfelt wedding. Roseanne was the chilled-est happy, beautiful bride – Tim was a beaming, witty (seriously loved your speech) and proud groom. The cake was awesome (who made it?!) the wedding breakfast was Pizza!!! There were chocolate frogs and it was in middle earth. Roseanne won Pinterest. Pimms and canapés in the sunshine. Big group pictures and a baby A who covered his suit in smears of goats cheese. Fast forward to chocolate fountain, delicious pulled pork baps and tasty mystery meat pies and some class music and dancing. Dancing to a bunch of early 00s hits, so glad to hear year 3000 played.
Meanwhile Tim is in the midst of becoming a Pokemon master. Suddenly everyone has put their tie around their head, crazy wedding tribe. Particularly great with Tim’s bow tie. Glad we got Stacey’s Mum and some sk8er boi in there. Classic disco. Beautiful Congo line.
All tied up with Take That ‘Never Forget’.

So how does it feel to get married?

I’ll finish with this quote from Giovanna Fletchers latest book ‘Always with Love’

‘I needed to know that I’m unequivocally and unquestionably loved, and that whoever I choose to give my fragile heart to can be trusted to house it and keep it safe alongside their own.’

Until next time,

Mrs Byford 🙂