Civitavecchia to Roma

Against the rules of cruising we kept our luggage in our possession and did not label and put them out the night before disembarking. Especially since we saw that the color of our tags meant that we weren’t supposed to leave the ship until after 10am. This was unacceptable as we were anxious to get into Rome and do some siteseeing and serious eating. Also our dinner friends were scheduled to leave earlier and we attempted to meet up in order to catch the train together. Even though I stress about it every time, we kept our luggage and, when we couldn’t find our friends, we disembarked. I know, Im such a a rebel. Others passengers were sitting in a holding area waiting endlessly for their luggage to come off the ship. After some initial confusion, we walked right to the shuttle bus and made our way to the train station. Italian train stations certainly will not be winning any awards for efficiency. We bought our 5€ tickets on the local train to Rome and waited for the 10:41 train that never came and instead hopped on the 11:10 which, of course, left late. One of the beauties of buying train tickets in Italy is that you need to validate them in a mini kiosk that is different at every station. (Note: none of our train tickets were checked on the train. So as usual I got myself hyped up to buy tickets and rush to validate it, only for no one to even look or ask for it).

Once in Rome we had a terrible map from the ship and therefore had no clue where we were in relation to our hotel. We also desperately had to use the WC and had no desire to pay 1€ for the opportunity. Did I mention it was also raining? So like typical tourists, we overpaid for a cab to La Griffe hotel on via Natzionale. After check in we hit the streets with a vengeance. We had limited time and every major site in Rome to see.

First stop was Vatican City, aka San Pietro. We went through the metal detectors, got approved by the fashion police, and past the Swiss guard. We even climbed the 551 steps up to the coupola. What we didn’t realize is that the Vatican museum aka the Sistine chapel, closed at 4pm. So we jumped on a bus and went straight to the colosseum. Thank goodness for the Roma pass because we promptly cut the line and saved ourselves at least 45 min. After listening to James quote Gladiator a couple times, and ask me if I was not entertained, we hightailed it over to the Trevi fountain, where we stopped for pizza and wine. We ate on a quiet side street and were pretty much the only people there on a monday.

We saw the Trevi fountain and the pantheon in haste, since we were exhausted and anxious to get gelato and relax at the rooftop garden of our hotel. The last day of vacation is always the hardest. We met great people, saw amazing places that we want to go back to, and ate delicious food. Now we had to psych ourselves up for a long travel day followed by going back to work.