Day 13: Civitavecchia/Rome

What a day we had!  It was fun, it was challenging, it was exhausting…at 8pm we are back in our hotel in Civitavecchia. Stick a fork in me, I’m done!

It was nice to see sun again this morning when we woke up. Actually, shortly after we woke up; it was still dark when the alarm went off at 6am. We finalized packing up our cabin (the over the door shoe rack and all toiletries were packed in a Princess tote bag for fast unpacking tomorrow on the Norwegian Spirit). By 8am we were in the Horizon Court Buffet lingering over breakfast. Our tentative walk off time was 9:45am. 

It was a rather strange turnaround day. I suspect a large percentage of passengers were staying on until Dubai or Singapore, so disembarkation seemed very easy, and very fast.  By 9:25am they were making the last and final announcement for all disembarking passengers to go ashore, and that was our cue to go down to Deck 7 to disembark. Our two suitcases were among only 20 or so still remaining in the terminal. 

The waiting game then began, as taxi/shuttle after taxi/shuttle would pull into the parking lot in front of the terminal, and a driver would emerge, carrying a piece of paper with a name on it. Couple by couple, the waiting guests were picked up, most of them bound for Rome. Finally a van arrived and the emerging paper contained our name, and we were off, heading to the Hotel Traiano in.Civitavecchia. 

I don’t remember exactly why I chose this hotel for our one night stay. I knew it had an elevator (very important) and very good reviews. The price was certainly right (€81, including transfers and breakfast tomorrow morning). They do a big cruise business here. When we arrived this morning, the lobby was busy with people who were boarding the Sapphire today. 

We were assigned a room shortly after 11am, a nice corner unit on the fourth floor with a wrap around balcony.. It’s very basic but very clean and extremely quiet (which the hotels closer to the waterfront are not). It took us a few minutes to get settled and lock up our valuables in the safe, and then we set out to walk about 15 minutes down to the Civitavecchia train station. Our goal for the day was to go to Rome for the afternoon.

We purchased tickets for €4 each. Our outbound train was in a newer, two level car, and it was nearly empty. We watched while the train traveled south along the water and then did a big left turn toward Rome. I think it took less than an hour; this train was fast, reaching speeds of 92 mph. We disembarked at Stazione San Pietro, about a 10-minute walk from St. Peter’s Square. 

We first walked to St. Peter’s Basilica, thinking we might go inside again (and maybe even stay for the 5pm Mass), but were met with long, long lines waiting to see inside. Someone who worked there estimated it was a 75-90 minute wait to enter the basilica. When we were here two years ago, we had entered from the Sistine Chapel and avoided the line altogether. We didn’t realize until today what an advantage that had been!

St. Peter’s Square

Directional tiles

St. Peter’s Basilica

St. Peter’s Square

Vatican City parking

Lunch stop

Love these balconies!

HATE this trash!

Instead we just walked around Vatican City awhile, and finally settled on a restaurant to have a late lunch/early dinner. It was close to 5pm by the time we finished, and we headed back to the Stazione San Pietro to take a train back to Civitavecchia. Oh my.  The next train to Civitavecchia was cancelled altogether and the one after that was about 15 minutes late. When we boarded, it was standing room only and these were old cars with no bars to hold on to. I inched my way toward the sliding door at the back of the car, where it was hooked together with the next car and I held on to the door handle, hoping that I would not inadvertently open it while we were speeding across the countryside. 

It was dark when we arrived back in Civitavecchia, but we thought we could carefully find our way back up to the hotel. We stopped at a small store on the way to pick up beverages and snacks for the evening and are back in the room. Unfortunately, the WiFi that worked fine in the lobby isn’t working at all in our room, so I am typing this post on my iPhone. It’s good practice for the next ten days. On NCL we’ll be crossing to the dark side, and I will have to rely on publishing my blog posts the next day, pending a decent cellular signal in our ports. I will continue to write, even if I can’t publish, and will get caught up as soon as I can. 

G is fully absorbed in a show on one the TV’s few channels called Container Wars. It’s apparently an American show dubbed in Italian, so he doesn’t understand a thing that is being said, but is watching anyway. I remember he did this same thing in Papeete, Tahiti, only there the shows were in French or Tahitian, but I don’t get it. We have hours of shows downloaded on our iDevices. Shows in English. ;-) 

No TV for me; I will soon be asleep. We walked over 21,000 steps today, on rough cobblestones and uneven pavement, and I am sore (that foot!).  And wiped out. And really, really, really sore.

I felt again today what I’ve felt before... I wish I had visited places like Rome 50 years ago. Sure, I would have been a kid, but setting aside that reality, I have a feeling that all of these places were much less crowded with much less security a few decades ago. They are close to be ruined by both for me. (When did we get used to visiting tourist sites accompanied by camouflaged soldiers carrying automatic weapons? You don’t see that in the travel pix!) 

And cell phones don’t help the situation. G said today that, at any point in time, half the people are talking on their phones and the other half are taking selfies with theirs. He was right. He usually is. 

And it didn’t even add to my hurts to admit that. ;-)

Day 53: Civitavecchia, Italy

Today was made much easier for us because of our decision not to try to get to Rome, about an hour away. As it turned out, it would have been nearly impossible for us to do so; the new cabin into which we were moving was not vacated until 8:30am and it was 9:30am before it was readied for us. As quickly as we tried to move our things (and they were already packed in bags), it was still 10:30pm by the time we were settled with everything put away. It helped a great deal that we are now only about 20 steps from our old cabin, with no elevators required during the move. 

Once settled, we took the port shuttle to the Civitavecchia port entrance (this is a HUGE port) and then walked a short distance to a cafe with WiFi. We were experiencing another issue with our Comcast internet at home which affected our ability to monitor anything remotely. I think this is the straw that breaks the camel's back, and when we return home, our Comcast voice service will be dropped and our multipurpose Comcast voice and data router replaced with a more reliable one providing data only. This will mean that we will no longer get transcripts of voice messages left on our home phone emailed to us immediately but we will join most of the rest of the world in cutting our land line and simply using our cell phones. In the mean time, it took some doing, but G again remotely reset the router and got us up and running...until the next time. 

We were back on the Pacific Princess and in the Club Restaurant enjoying the wonderful embarkation day lunch by 1pm. I wanted to stay on board to attend the 3pm performance of the Corrado Duo (you might recall how much we enjoyed this piano/tenor duo when they were on board on October 28, the day we re-boarded the Pacific Princess in Civitavecchia). G opted instead to go back into town to check on things at home one more time (to make sure they had stayed working for at least three hours!) so we temporarily parted ways. 

The Corrado Duo was just as wonderful as last time and I immensely enjoyed their nearly hour long performance. Once back in the cabin, I decided to take advantage of the time and space and do some hand laundry and get showered for the evening during the 4:30pm muster drill for newly embarking passengers. That's kind of a tradition with me, regardless of ship. ;-)  G returned, having run from the cafe to the ship just for a workout, and we were at dinner in the Club Restaurant (same table, same waiters -Magnificent Marco and Terrific Taufik) by 5:45pm. The special Mediterranean menu items have disappeared on this transatlantic cruise; I had egg rolls as starters, then a garden salad and the conchiglie something something, a pasta in tomato sauce with broccoli as an entree. Yum!

This cruise's Welcome Aboard show was held at 7:45pm in the Cabaret Lounge. The singers and dancers did their usual kick off and then Cruise Director Frank introduced them and the rest of the cruise staff and then comedian Tony Daro did a short show. It was a tough audience (everyone is tired from either flying in for the cruise or, for many of the almost 300 passengers who stayed on from last cruise, all day visits to Rome) but Tony won them over and was truly harious without picking on or poking fun at any passengers. I like that in a comedian!

We knew that today was the day piano entertainer Jere Ring was joining the Pacific Princess until January 3. Jere was on board with us in French Polynesia two winters ago and we loved his sense of humor and the way that he fully involved himself in all the activities on the ship. We were returning to the ship just before lunch today when G spotted Jere and his partner Johnny in the terminal waiting to come on board. Unfortunately, I didn't see them until I was through security so it was a case where I could see him but not get close enough to talk. So when he started performing in the Casino Lounge at 8:30pm tonight, we were there and it was hug time. We had so much fun with him in French Polynesia, and he told several French Polynesia stories tonight. We listened to him perform until 9:30pm, but we are still busy with ports for another couple of days and can't stay out later than that on school nights. ;-)

The cabin we had last cruise had a decent WiFi signal, but we are not so lucky this time around. I will begin to again publish posts the next morning when I can't get a signal at night. On a positive note, this is the best mattress I've had to date on the Pacific Princess (now that my back is already wrecked). Another downside is the clanging taking place on the outside of the ship right outside our cabin. We sat with a couple in the Cabaret Lounge tonight who had been in the next cabin last cruise and asked to be moved or they were going to fly home. They said their toilet was constantly blocked and the clanging drove them nuts. They accepted a downgrade to Deck 3 just to escape the issues. Well, we have earplugs and enjoy the plumbing perks that toilet issues bring. Fingers crossed that this new cabin works out.