Med Cruise Day 8: Rome and Home

St Peter's Basilica

We awoke early to find ourselves docked in Civittavechia. Our cases had been taken the evening before, so at our 8am anointed time we just had to collect our last bits and pieces in hand luggage and make our way off the ship. It was a very organised disembarkation. We collected our cases, and found our transfer driver Franesco waiting.

As our original flight home had been cancelled a couple of months ago, and a re-arranged one booked for 6.40pm, we'd decided to arrange a private tour of Rome to make the most of our final day, even though we'd "done" Rome a week earlier.

We'd booked (or rather our friends had) Marco's Private Tours for both the transfer from Civittavechia to Rome, the tour of Rome highlights and transfer to the airport afterwards. Franseco was our driver for the day and we were to meet Marco in Rome. Francesco made the trip to Rome in short order, and before we knew it he was dropping us off virtually on the steps of St Peter's Basilica! Even at about 9.15am the queue to get in were getting serious on what was already a very warm morning, with temperatures forecast to get to 34 degrees plus, but a little sneaky dive in to the line saw us only having to wait about 20 minutes to get in (sorry to anyone we annoyed but we were on a tight schedule!).

Anne and I came here in 2013, but it's. palace you can't get enough of. It's absolutely cavernous inside. You just cannot get the scale of the place from the outside. Crowds are a given, so you have to be a little assertive to get to the front of the chapels, paintings and so on inside. One of the highlights has to be Michaelangelo's la Pieta or The Pity depicting Jesus on Mary's lap after hiss crucifixion.

Michalangelo's la Pieta/The Pity

Inside St Peter's

St Peter's

Swiss Guard at the Vatican entrance

We emerged from St Peter's and took the obligatory photo of the Swiss Guard standing on guard outside the entrance to the Vatican. Whilst the uniform looks a bit comical, I wouldn't want to meddle with these fellas. That spike on a pole looks like it could do some damage, and I'm sure there were probably some more modern armaments tucked away somewhere.

We met up with Francesco and Marco who wore remarkable red Doc Martens (or they looked like anyway). He's a licensed tour guide Roman by birth, multi-lingual with perfect English (albeit with an American accent). We re-agreed the remaining itinerary for the day, but he was flexible to do anything we wanted to do. First stop was the Trevi Fountain - again, you can't get too much of this!. Francesco navigated the narrow  cobbles streets expertly in our thankfully air-conditioned Mercedes whilst Marco gave us a running commentary on Rome, it's history and where we were going. We ended up driving to within 50 metres of the fountain!!!!! Not a sat nav in sight. Marco didn't hang around and we needed to be on our toes to keep up with him in the crowds. Whilst we'd done the Trevi Fountain several times, Marco pointed out various things we didn't know which made this further visit all the more worthwhile.

At the Trevi Fountain with Marco

After a short, unexpected, but welcome coffee stop we headed for the Colosseum. Marco had pre-booked "fast pass" tickets for us so we didn't have to queue to get in. Something was amiss though as at the first check they wouldn't let us in. Cue Marco getting his assertive side out and soon enough we were in. Marco wasn't with us for this bit, so we were with a party with a Colosseum guide. It's a fascinating place, but I won't go into it here - best to read from the link above, but one can only imaging what it must have been like at it's peak.

The Colosseum. Be nice when it's finished...

By now it was getting VERY hot, and we were glad to escape back to Marco and the coolness of the minibus. Next stop was a streetside restaurant, for a great pizza, salad and a cold beer after which we shot off to the Spanish Steps, Franceso again driving expertly to within feet of the place. How he does this through those narrow, cobbled, tourist filled streets without hitting anything or running anyone over is beyond me, but he did!

The Spanish Steps

After another great Marco history lesson on the Spanish Steps,  we dropped Marco off at St peter's before Francesco took us up on one of the hills overlooking the city for a panoramic view of Rome.

Ciao Rome! It's been a blast!

If you're ever in Rome or the surrounding area, I can heartily recommend Marco for a tour. His enthusiasm, passion and knowledge of the City (and I believe many other parts of the country) are second to none, and he's great fun too!

Then it was off to the airport, and although we had a bit of a wait to get checked in, all went well until we got back to Blighty.

When we landed at Heathrow we had to wait around 45 minutes on the plane before there was anyone available to manoeuvre the jetway exit to the plane to let us off. Once that frustration was out of the way  and we got to baggage reclaim, we experienced a long delay before bags started to appear. A few did, and then they stopped coming. About an hour and a half later, an announcement came over the tannoy that there was "a minimum two hour delay for baggage on all flights"!!!!!!!!! Luckily, we didn't have to wait too much longer after that, and when bags did start coming through ours, were some of the first off.

A quick trot to valet parking to pick up our car, and then it was a two hour or so drive home, getting there at about 1am in the morning.

A long day but what a holiday we've had.

Thanks for following this if you've stuck with it. I hope I've been able to share a bit of our adventures with you.

If you're really a glutton for punishment, you can find the best curated photos of out trip here on my Flickr feed.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 2: Embarkation and a sea day

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.

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!

Caravaggio's Matthews Cycle

We'd wanted to go into the Pantheon with it's massive dome, but there was a huge queue to get in, and frankly we couldn't be bothered. Instead we headed to impressive Piazza Navona where we found a restaurant and had a massive pizza and a cold beer for lunch.

The Pantheon

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 

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.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

Instagram: simon_hiscocks

Med Cruise Day 1: Getting to Rome

This series of blog posts reflects on our recent visit to Rome followed by a 7 night cruise around the Greek  islands and Italy. There's far too much to tell you about in one go, so this will take a few posts - bear with me.

We booked this cruise way back in Feb '21 with everything crossed that the pandemic would have eased by June '22 having already had two previous cruises cancelled (an Asia one in Feb '20 and a Mediterranean one, similar to this in September '21). Luckily for us things had eased sufficiently for this one to go ahead.

We booked with two friends with Celebrity Cruises aboard their Edge class ship the Celebrity Edge leaving Rome (well Civittavechia) and calling at Santorini, Rhodes, Mykonos and Naples before returning to Civittavechia. Our friends are have done a good few cruises, this was just our second. We decided to fly out a couple of days before sail date to enable us to have a couple of nights in Rome - the Eternal City which we last visited in 2013, but you can never get enough of the place, trust me.

With covid restrictions easing, the only covid related thing we had to ensure was that we undertook a supervised LFT 24 hours before boarding (ie when we were in Rome). Supervised because it's an American ship and that's what they say we had to do (apparently we can't be trusted to stick a swab up our noses on our own). This would be done over a video call, so we duly ordered our tests before leaving the UK and they arrived a couple of days before we left.

Needing to be at Heathrow by 9am (ish) we left at 6.30am, and surprisingly, the journey was pretty straightforward, with traffic on the M4 very (relatively) light all the way. The only slight hiccough was having to briefly stop behind a traffic officers car just outside Reading whilst they hoisted a dead deer off the motorway.

Arriving at Heathrow T5 we dropped our cars at Valet parking (expensive, but SO worth it). The journey had been so good bag drop wasn't even open, so we opted for breakfast. Following that our bag drop and pass through security was straightforward  and we were fairly quickly in departures. The flight departed more or less on time  and was pretty quick at a smidge over two hours. Masks were being worn on the plane but it wasn't too bad. These days any food or drink has to be pre-ordered on basic BA flights. We hadn't done so, and therefore got the default mini bottle of water and a bag of ready salted crisps!

The descent into Rome's Fiumicino airport was a tad lumpy, as there were some serious thunderclouds around, but we landed safely enough. Security was rather painless, but now that we're not part of the EU we had to get our passports stamped! Baggage claim also wasn't too painless.

Fiumicino is a way out of Rome itself (about 30km), and although you can catch a train in, we'd opted for a private transfer. Cue our first problem of the trip. No driver to pick us up. We gave it a few minutes before calling, to find out than the driver had "gone to the toilet". Eventually, about 20 mins after we exited departures, he arrived and there ensued a fast, music trip into Rome and our hotel, the NH Collection Roma Fori Imperiali. 

This small, almost boutique hotel was one of the highlights of our entire holiday. It's slap bang in the middle of Rome, within easy walking distance of all the major attractions - the Trevi Fountain is 10 mins one way, the Colosseum 10 mins the other way. The Pantheon and Spanish Steps are about 20 mins and even the Vatican and St Peter's Basilica are within 20-30 minutes easy walking.

Check in was nice and and made easier by the complimentary Prosecco. Our room had no view, but the whole hotel was very nicely furnished and the staff were excellent. We'd booked two mights here including dinner (which we had to reserve a table for before arriving). We thought we'd be eating in the small breakfast area downstairs, but it was on the roof terrace. Luckily, the thunderclouds had disappeared, and it was a warm Roman evening.  And what a view for dinner - this was literally our view!

This vast memorial to the first king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II is also knows as Altare della Patria (Alter of the Fatherland) and more colloquially as "The Wedding Cake" and is pretty much visible from every key vantage point in the city. It's HUGE! It also contains the tomb of the unknown soldier, and is guarded by armed soldiers.

Not a bad spot for an excellent dinner helped down by a couple of bottles of expensive wine. That's not a boast by the way, just the observation that the cheapest bottle of wine on the wine list was €50 !!!!! However, bear in mind that we were in one of the most beautiful and historic cities in the world, and slap bang in the centre of the main tourist area to boot with a view to die for. We didn't begrudge it, and to be fair, the wine (along with the food) was glorious. And we were on our first holiday abroad since summer 2019. So we had two bottles!

After all that, we needed to walk some of our dinner off, so it was on with the trainers (central Rome  is mainly cobbled streets and you need really comfy shoes to wear if you're walking anywhere) and a 10 minute walk to the Trevi Fountain. It is stunning, but if you haven't been to Rome before, please be prepared for the crowds. You ain't going to see this on your own. The throngs of people can be quite claustrophobic - as they are at all the main attractions in Rome, and if you have a bag, keep it close to you and you're wallet protected. Pickpockets abound, although there are more police around than before (and we later found out many undercover police) keeping their eyes out for pickpockets and the multitude of hawkers.

And with that, we were all pretty shattered, and so it was back to the hotel for our first night away.

The next post will tell you about our full day in Rome.

Twitter: @Statto1927 

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/people/simon_hiscocks/ 

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