Days 6-7 Rome

I thought when we got to Rome we would be able to post our daily progress, and I did manage to post the blog for Pisa and Florence.   Unfortunately, the only 110 plug in the room did not have the proper voltage to charge my computer or our phones.  So once I posted that blog entry and checked my email, I was out of juice with no way to recharge until we got on the ship.  As you can tell, we are now on-board and recharged, so I can write again.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that the Wi-Fi doesn't reach to our room, so I'll have to go amidships to the library to access the internet.  I'll write this tonight (10/11) but will probably not post it until tomorrow night.   Why will become clear later.  For now, let me talk about Rome.

On the 2nd Tier of the Coliseum

We took the Euro Star train from Florence to Rome on Saturday afternoon.  Our bags were sent ahead by bus in the morning.   When we arrived at the hotel it was after 6PM and we were tired so we tried to order room service.   Italians don't eat until after 7PM, so we had to wait until then to get anything.   The next morning we had to be on the bus again at 8AM for a tour of ancient Rome.   The last time I was in Rome the Coliseum was closed for repairs, but now they have restored enough so you can go inside.  We were able to go to the 2nd level and look down over the arena.   The floor is only partially covered with wood to show what it looked like, but it is mostly open so the subterranean rooms where the gladiators prepared and the animals were keep are visible.  Our guide was excellent and we got a wonderful tour of the structure.  After that we rode past several ruins and took a walking tour to the Pantheon and Trevi Fountain.  Some of the group went on from there to an optional tour of the Catacombs, but we decided to skip that.  Instead the bus took us back to the hotel and we walked from there to the area just before Vatican City to do some souvenir shopping.

Pantheon

In the evening we boarded the bus again for a trip to a restaurant called the L'Archeologia, near the catacomb excavations.  This was the farewell dinner for our pre-cruise tour group and it was an excellent Italian meal of pasta, veal, wine, dessert, and espresso.  

Ceiling in Vatican Museum

On Monday morning our bags had to be out of the room by 7:30AM and we were on the  bus again by 8:30AM for a tour of the Vatican.   It was raining but that didn't stop us.   We visited what our guide called the most important parts of the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, and St Peter's Basilica.  As with all the places we visited this week, the art was amazing.   Statues, paintings, tapestries, and frescos.  We had a half hour at the souvenir shops at the end, then back on the bus by 1:30PM and on our way to the pier.

Michealangelo's Pieta in St Peters

Civitavecchia is the town that hosts the Rome piers, about an hour northwest of Rome.    The Navigator of the Seas is a huge ship, but the boarding process was amazingly fast.  Our tour guide took care of the bags, so all we had to do was check-in (hardly any line) and find our room.   We have a larger room than I expected and a great veranda at the back of the ship.  First stop was lunch at the buffet, 2nd stop was to sign up for internet access.  Our bags were delivered shortly after we got back to our room and we were able to unpack most of our stuff before the lifeboat drill.  We left Rome a little late because they were still loading supplies, but we watched the shoreline fade away as we had dinner.

We are at the early dining 6PM seating.   Dinner is not as formal as on Celebrity ships, but still very nice.  The table we were assigned was for 8 people but only one other couple joined us tonight and they had been displaced from another table because someone else sat in the wrong spot.  We found out later that the other 4 people assigned to our table were a couple with 2 very young children.   We are kind of glad they didn’t show up.   As it is, there is a group from a retirement community traveling together who got split up and wanted to eat together, so tomorrow they are moving us and the other couple at our table to a table for 6 and moving the group to our table to be together.   

I hope they find a third couple for our table.  It is always awkward to be with only one other couple on a cruise.  Don't get me wrong, they are very nice.  They are a retired Indian couple from Vancouver.  He is a doctor and she ran his office.  Now they live outside Vancouver in the summer and do volunteer work in India in the winter.  We enjoyed talking to them tonight.  However, from past experience, we've found that with only 2 couples who were strangers before the cruise, it's hard to keep the conversations going for 2 weeks.  A third couple in the mix would help balance.

We're skipping the welcome show tonight.  Tomorrow we dock in Naples and have a 10 hour bus tour starting at 7:00AM.  We need to get some rest tonight.