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| Anne checking out our stateroom |
An early rise (well 8am) for breakfast in the hotel after which we dialled in to our respective video calls to do our "supervised" LFT. The instructions say you could have to wait for up to an hour to get called in from the virtual waiting room, but we were in with a minute or. Basically a bloke (in this case) who looked like he was in his kitchen takes you though an identity check and then talks you through the test. After this you wait 15 mins for the test to do it's magic, upload a photo and wait for a pass/fail email. Thankfully all four of us had negative results with the result coming through in lead than 10 minutes.
So we'd made it to Rome with no flight issues, and made it past the LFT test. Tick, Tick.
Once that way out of the way we made our way into the glorious sunshine - mid to high 20's and a cloudless sky. Our plan was a slow amble to the Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and wandering into a few churches (there's over 450 in Rome, and trust me 95% of them have more gold, artwork and stunning interiors than virtually every church I've ever seen in the UK). A stop for lunch somewhere and see how the rest of the day goes.
The Trevi Fountain was as always massively crowded, and unfortunately the fountain was not flowing as they were collecting the coins that had been thrown in. Apparently over €3 million is collected every year from the fountain, although the story about throwing a coin in to come back to Rome, two to meet someone and three to marry them, is a complete myth generated by the 1954 film "Three Coins in the Fountain".
We then wandered over to the Spanish Steps and climbed up them to have a peek into the church at the top, the Trinità dei Monti, which despite looking superb from the outside, by Rome standards is pretty ordinary inside.
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| The Spanish Steps |
After that we headed towards the Pantheon stopping along the way at the Church of S. Luigi dei Francesi where Caravaggio's St Matthew cycle is on display. It's not every church you can wander into to see a Caravaggio, but there's two or three in Rome!
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| Caravaggio's Matthews Cycle |
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| The Pantheon |
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| Piazza Navona |
Sated by lunch we wandered towards the river Tiber and found ourselves on the Ponte Sant'Angelo opposite the impressive Castel Sant'Angelo (you've gathered everything's impressive in Rome by now). Usually lined with hawkers, they were scattering as there must have been police about. Wwe caught a glimpse of St Peter's Basilica down the road, but left that for another day as we knew we'd be back the following Saturday
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| Ponte and Castel Sant'Angelo |
By now, hot and sweaty we head back to the hotel and that evening went for a pre-booked dinner at the Taverna dei Fori Imperiali, about a ten minute walk from the hotel. It's a small family run restaurant, and very popular so booking is highly recommended. Again, prices weren't cheap, but the wine was less expensive than the hotel, although just as nice. And that rounded off our second evening in Rome.
The following day we had a booked private transfer to Civittavechia, about an hour from Rome. We arrived at the port to see the massive Celebrity Edge, docked along with about three other cruise ships. Embarkation was easy as we'd booked as suite guests, and so had a more personalised service for boarding. Quickly aboard, we checked out or lovely cabin before heading for lunch in the Luminae restaurant used by the suite passengers. Blimey! What an introduction to the fabulous food (and wine) and superb service from all the Celebrity team that we were to experience over the next week. We did the mandatory safety briefing (although this can now be done on an app rather than a face to face briefing). We also met our stateroom (cabin - stateroom sounds very posh!) attendant Baso and Stateroom Steward, Singh who were and continued to be exemplary and highly professional in every way whenever we had any interaction with them.
Settled in we had a quick explore and then watched from the sundeck as we sailed out of port at 5pm, destination Santorini. However, that was over a day away and after another sumptuous evening meal we slept well in our cabin, waking the following morning to a sea day. The day was spent largely checking out our new surroundings, relaxing on the pool deck and eating and drinking and attending the evening show.
So day one at sea was very much a settling in day. Already eating and drinking too much, having fun in the sun and looking forward to our first port of call, Santorini in the morning.
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