To be honest, I’d never really had a huge inclination to visit Italy until more recent years, and I’m blaming spaghetti bolognese for this entirely. It was probably what best shaped the preconception in my head of what the country would be like, and I hated the stuff as a child. Mincemeat and I have never really got along, and will never be good friends. I will politely endure it if I must, but that’s it.

So there is something quite poetic about the sight of a pack of dry spaghetti spilling out over a pavement next to a bin in Rome – like a game of pick-up sticks gone wrong – being one of the first things we see as we walk to our hotel in the centre of the city from Termini Stazione on a hot, August Friday.

“Oh, no!” I think to myself, fearing that I am indeed going to be subjecting myself to three days of mince like the younger version of me had imagined a trip to the old boot would be like. But as things would turn out, that would be the closest I’d get to it. Fortunately.

From what I’ve come to learn and hear about Italy from more recent years, I knew I’d like it, which is why I wanted to go, but it was the level of such fondness that came as the biggest surprise.

A country associated with love, a popular destination for honeymoons or romantic getaways where the people are all dressed to the nines in designer gear as they pop out engagement rings next to Trevi Fountain.

And then my sister and I, our sweat rivalling the famed fountain’s liquid emissions and our hair in messy buns as we bicker over directions. Women from all over the world in ballgowns, berating us for photo-bombing their signature Instagram snap in front of one of the city’s most infamous photo opportunities.

We grab a rushed, blurry selfie – that most people on the group-chat ignore – and scuttle off into a gelato shop.

Gelataria Della Palma is not a place for people who struggle with making big decisions, like us. 150+ flavours to choose from, in a range of colours that doesn’t just encompass the whole palette, but knocks it on its head completely. A queue of hot, salivating tourists lengthening behind us. I hurriedly pick the most colourful one (macaron) but my brain is too frazzled by the whole process to even really remember what my sister picks. The Clark Griswold lookalike behind the counter brings them out to us, along with our drinks, and we inhale both items without delay.

It’s probably about the tenth gelato of the whole weekend in Rome. But neither of us are psychologically equipped enough to bear with the levels of cringe that come from saying the obvious joke aloud. You know exactly the one I mean.

Owing to the heat – some 38 degrees of it – I suggest we visit the city’s main park, Villa Borghese. There, we may be able to find some much-needed shade from the tall pinus pinea trees which – thankfully (for several reasons) – are more colloquially known as ‘Umbrella Trees’. That’s what the lady we heard through the bright pink headsets on the Hop On Hop Off bus told us.

The Umbrella Trees are synonymous with Rome, and I want to marry them on the spot:

1) They’re providing shade right now
2) They have a cool name
3) They instantly take me back to my childhood by resembling Level 1-3 in Super Mario Bros for the Nintendo. Just need a few goombas.

We arrive at the park with all the pace of people who have just reached the summit of Kilimanjaro in peak heat. And we technically have. Via Francesco Crispi sits at an incline upon which one could quite easily feel the need to reach for the Kendal Mint Cake and Lucozade, though sadly we forget to bring along either item, or a flag with which to mark our feat.

Within minutes I spot the four-wheeled bicycles and immediately backtrack on my decision that Via Francesco Crispi has worked our legs enough. I race ahead to hire one for an hour; the logic being that we’ll get to see more of the park that way, and hopefully get some much-needed breeze whilst we do so. And on top of all that – it should also be quite fun!

“This isn’t what we want to do! Let’s take it back already!”

After only 15 minutes of pedalling, my sister isn’t loving life, fearing for her safety as we reach the dizzying heights of approximately 6 miles per hour. Two sisters bicker on a vehicle ironically known to ’80s UK kids as a ‘Chuckle Brother Bike’. And one of them hops off to both protect her limbs and try and see a gallery that turns out to be too much of a rip-off to get into, whilst the other painstakingly does the work of two for 45 minutes to try and prove a point. Entire families pedal past me multiple times, their necks craning at the empty seat beside me as they do so.

Probably thinking to themselves: “Perché quella ragazza sciocca sta pedalando da sola?” (Yes, I used Translate for that)

We compensate for our dual disdains with another gelato. Because when… Nah, still can’t bring myself to say it out loud.

All roads lead to the same joke.

The visit to the Vatican is a must. But the thing I appreciate most about it isn’t the (definitely impressive) St Peter’s Basilica, nor the knowledge of the significance of the sight before us.

Instead, it’s the variety of accents and faces. The realisation that we are standing somewhere that symbolises cosmopolitanism at its best.  Around 7 million people visit the Vatican every year, and so on this particular day we could be encountering some 20,000 of them. People from all over the world, many of whom are on pilgrimage, many of whom are looking to connect with their ancestors, and many of whom – like us – who just want to see something they’ve spent a lifetime hearing about, in person.

And others for whom the visit is for seemingly miscellaneous reasons:

“Orrr ah derrn’t get the oobSESHoon with the red things in the pot!” I overhear a lady from the North West of England say (or rather, shout), just moments after I’ve bought a couple of the red things in the pot, for two friends back home who seem to have a particular interest in Pope Leo XIV.

(Rosaries, by the way. She was talking about rosaries. Not the Strawberry Creams in a box of Roses, but actual items with which to pray. Sold in round plastic pots emblazoned with a picture of a particularly cheerful Leo on the front).

We had – without realising – timed our trip to the Vatican perfectly. Being the final Sunday in August, entry to the Sistine Chapel was free, and a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to see Michelangelo’s renowned Renaissance frescoes lay ahead of us.

Or it would have done, had I not made the unfortunate suggestion of an early lunch, where an unusually prolonged wait for a salad caprese and tomato soup mean we arrive at the Sistine Chapel around twenty minutes later than last entry, a time we had not been aware of. Our response is perhaps less than holy, my sister tries to sneak through the exit and I tell a maudlin story to the Security Guards about how my sister and I have always been desperate to see the Sistine Chapel. So much so that we completely didn’t think to look up the opening times in advance.

Both responses fail and we head off in a mood. I blame myself and the perpetual need for tomato soup.

But moods don’t last for long in Rome. Particularly not when you’re handed a complimentary aperitif upon arrival at the extremely reasonably priced Osteria Della Vita restaurant close to the Piazza di Spagna.

A lot of delicious pasta is eaten, Negroni Sbagliatos are sampled for the first time, and most importantly, my sister and I get to enjoy a nice, proper chat. That’s what this was all about, really. What most good holidays are about. It’s not so much about where you go or what you see, but the opportunity to share it all with loved ones. I hadn’t been away with my sister in 20 years, we had needed this and we had needed Italy.

But I’ll never get on a Chuckle Brother Bike with her again.

And I’m still not a fan of mincemeat. 

Fortunately, it turns out there’s a whole lot more to the old boot anyway…