On day 4 of my cruise around the Mediterranean, I arrived at the Port of Civitavecchia in Italy. From here I took a full day's excursion into Rome.
Rome, Italy.
Despite a late night, I woke in time to see the sunrise as I sat on my veranda as we approached Civitavecchia. I would leave the ship for a day trip to Rome today. I got breakfast before heading to deck 3, where I would leave the ship to get my coach to Rome. When I had passed through security I found my coach and climbed aboard.
The lady on the coach, our guide for the trip, is the most disorganized person I have ever met. She is very clever as she speaks multiple languages. One problem is that she keeps mixing the language mid-sentence, meaning no one understands her. She tells us we are stopping for a comfort break and have 10 minutes to use the toilet. The problem is there are around 5 full coach loads of people all wanting to use the one toilet.
Unsurprisingly, we leave the rest stop late. Why we had to stop less than 1 hour into a 1 1/2-hour trip is beyond me. We arrive in Rome and pick up our local guide, Michael. He is perfect as we do the coach part of the guided tour. He is absorbing, clear and very knowledgeable. Unfortunately, the female guide keeps talking so loudly on her mobile phone he has to keep stopping. Ultimately, he had enough of her and told her to be quiet and stop using her phone while he was talking to us.
The driven part of the tour took us past the Colosseum, Circo Massimo, across The Tiber River and past the Castel Sant Angelo toward the Vatican.
After the driving part of the tour, we began the walking part. We walked through Rome and entered the Vatican State to visit the square outside St Paul's Basilica. Michael, our Rome guide, tells us about the area and points out many interesting buildings and monuments. We had a short time to buy souvenirs in a nearby shop, and I purchased a very nice hoodie for only €20, which I thought was an excellent price as the shop was right next to Vatican Square. When we left, we rejoined the coach and were driven to a local restaurant.
Incredibly I had been to the restaurant before. When I was here in 2013 with my friend Paul Dunne, we stopped at the Peperoncino restaurant on the way back to our hotel. We were pretty drunk but stopped for a pizza and more beer. Despite having already closed, they made us a pizza and gave us a beer. We struggled to climb the steep steps next to the restaurant when we left but did make it.
Lunch was quite lovely, like a typical Spanish Menu del dia that I am used to at home, it had a pasta dish, a chicken dish, a pudding and was served with wine. After lunch, we reboarded the coach and were all taken to our next drop-off point and the 2nd part of our walking tour.
We walked to the Church of the Santissima Trinità dei Monti at the top of the Spanish Steps. The steps were built to link the Church with the Piazza di Spagna at the bottom, where we saw the Fontana Della Barcaccia or Fountain of the Boat. We then continued through Rome to many of the popular tourist spots, Piazza Navona, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, the Panteón de Agrippa, and the Fontana di Trevi, before being picked back up by the coach outside the Supreme Court of Cassation to return our ship at Civitavecchia.
As we left our guide, Michael, I thanked him and gave him a €5 tip. I noticed I was the only one who did out of everyone on the 55-seater coach. He was terrific and deserved a lot more. We all reboarded the coach for our trip back to the ship. The journey took about an hour without stopping, so I still can not see a reason for stopping on the way to Rome.
The guide for the tour who was with us all day from the ship received no tip; she was terrible, and I pointed this out on the online app questionnaire she asked us to fill out. She kept speaking multiple languages in one sentence, which got everyone confused. She passed around paper and asked us all to fill in our names and room numbers despite already having this info, but gave out no pen to be able to do it. When she handed out the radios for the tour, she gave out some on the wrong channel, some that didn't work and generally didn't seem to know what she was doing or what places we were looking at.
This evening, I again watched several singers on board after having my meal with Susan and Bryan and Linda and Michael.
I went to bed at around 11:30 pm tonight after having many pain-killing cocktails for the pain in my very swollen right leg.