Homebound: My Trip Back Home to Rome with Travelspective

Last October, I had the opportunity to travel to Rome to film a series of videos for Travelspective, a digital travel network specialised in creating beautiful video content that showcases experiences from around the world. My videos are out now! I am excited to share them with you. It was wonderful for me to film in Rome, to share the love for my city and my memories of growing up there.

My collaboration with the Travelspective team was serendipitous, as they happened to be filming in Rome right around the time I decided to spend some time there to re-discover my city.

Over the past 12 years that I have lived abroad, I slowly disconnected myself from my hometown. For one reason or another, my visits to Rome became more sporadic, to the point where I didn’t feel like I belonged there anymore. When I realised this was happening, I felt sad because I love Rome and I am proud to be a Roman. I don’t want to become a stranger to my own home. So I promised myself I would travel back more often, to spend time actually living in the city and researching the Roman cuisine.

By the time I started filming with Travelspective, I felt like I had re-discovered Rome and fallen in love with it again. They asked me to guide them around the city and I was excited to share all my favourite food spots.

That’s how I ended up spending two days walking, eating, drinking in Rome with a crew of travel content creators and film-makers. There’s no better feeling than showing someone around your home and seeing them falling in love with it.

I literally spent two days eating my way through my favourite cafés, restaurants and ice cream shops while the Travelspective team filmed me. I talked a lot and shared my feelings about living abroad and what it feels like to go back to reconnect to my cultural roots.

All those hours of talking and eating have been beautifully edited by Travelspective into three videos.

There are two Homebound features dedicated to my return to Rome and what it felt to grow up there.

The third video is a culinary guide of Rome, where I share my favourite Roman foods and the best places to eat them. It might be a traditional trattoria or an aperitivo spot, a local deli or gelato shop, a Roman pizza place or a café – there are so many great places to discover in Rome.

I hope these videos will inspired you to visit Rome and experience the city as a local.

Allow yourself a few days to visit all the sights, but don’t forget that the magic lies in getting lost in the different neighbourhoods, in chatting to locals, in sitting in a bar for hours drinking coffee and watching the city life, in eating the most delicious food like Romans do.