Mediterranean Cruise - Part 1: Departure

We're just back from a 10 night Mediterranean cruise to Italy, Croatia, Greece and Montenegro aboard the Celebrity Beyond, and we've had a wonderful time. The next series of blog posts will hopefully give you some insight to our fabulous holiday.

Our ship in Corfu

This was our third cruise after sailing in the Caribbean in early 2018 and the Med last year, and our first "solo", as we'd previously been with our friends, who unfortunately had to cancel this one at the last minute. Both previous cruises have been with Celebrity, so we knew what we were getting - high quality, friendly service with superb facilities and destinations 

We'd originally planned to fly out to Rome (our departure port was Civitavecchia about an hour north of Rome) a day early, spend the night in Rome and transfer to our ship the next day. However, due to changes  in plans when our friends couldn't make the trip, we decided to transfer straight to Civitavecchia from the airport (we've been to Rome a couple of times before here and here). 

We booked an apartment for the night, and the easyJet flight and transfer was nice and easy, although getting up at 2.30am for the drive to Bristol to catch our flight wasn't ideal!

We dropped our suitcase at a mini-mart in the town via a pre-booking on the Radical Storage website/app as we couldn't check in to our apartment until late afternoon. The process was easy, and although it seemed a bit iffy when we walked into the store to drop our bags, it all went rather well.

We found a marvellous little restaurant just round the corner from our apartment called Il Conte Zio in a small piazza. We mostly picked this one because there were bunch of local guys sat in it - always a good sign in my opinion, although it turned out these must have been the owners/proprietors as they ended up serving us! Nevertheless after deciphering the menu (all in Italian) and trying my very basic language skills out we ordered and ate a very tasty meal. 

As an aside, although they spoke broken English, I believe making the attempt to speak in the local language anywhere in the world, will endear you to the locals, even if it's only, "please", "thank you", "can I have another beer please?" and "Can I have the bill please?". It worked here.... the guys gave us some of their mozzarella which they claimed to be the freshest and best in Italy, and I have to say, it was the tastiest mozzarella I've ever eaten. They were also talking to a couple of gents who arrived with a big box of bottles of olive oil, clearly deciding whether to buy - they did and then one of the chaps came over and said you must try this - brought out some more bread, drizzled the olive oil and cracked some salt over it. And my word, I could have eaten a whole plateful. So unlike any olive oil I've tasted anywhere else.

Lunch and a couple of beers later, we wandered to the waterfront and had an beer where we ended up having a long conversation with a group of four Canadians who were on a day out from their cruise ship. It was lovely to chat with some people whilst whiling away an hour or two in a cafe, before picking up our cases and heading to our apartment.

The view from our apartment!

Our apartment was on a side street. No view, but clean, comfortable and the host who messaged us to make sure all was ok was really helpful, and gave us several recommendations for eating dinner later. We took one of those recommendations on board and ate at Tre Pomodori close to the marina where we watched a fabulous sunset whilst eating some delicious pizzas (more mozzarella!)

Civitavecchia sunset

When in Rome (or Civitavecchia anyway)

Having eaten about 3lbs  of mozzarella in one day we walked back to our apartment via the same piazza where we ate lunch, and stopped in a small and unprepossessing bar for a cocktail before heading to bed. We weren't due to be at the ship before 12pm the next day, but we had to be out of the apartment by 9.30am so at least we had a slight lie in!

Out of the apartment the next day, we'd decided (or rather I had) that it was only a shortish walk to the cruise terminal, so rather than get a taxi we hauled our cases down to the watering and a cafe. We grabbed a coffee and sat and watched the world go by for a while before making our way to the ship.

The good news is that we made it. The less good news is that it was very hot, and although the cruise terminal looked near, it was actually further than it looked! Mrs H didn't quite death stare me as we got to the terminal, but it was a close run thing! Getting on board was a breeze having checked in online beforehand. We dropped our bags, and went through security and were on board in less than 10 minutes. 

After paying an quick and obligatory visit to our muster station (you have to physically visit you muster station, but all the info can be read and done online via Celebrity's impressive cruise app on your phone) we legged it to the Sunset Bar at the back of the ship for a first on board drink. After that we picked up our sea passes adjacent to our stateroom, (a bit like a credit card that you have to have with you at all times - including every time you order a drink. We met our brilliant stateroom attendant Putu, from Bali who advised us there was a lunch being served in one of the main restaurant so off we went for a lovely lunch and a glass of wine. (Can you see a theme developing here?). Put was superb throughout the cruise,. He worked so hard and nothing, nothing at all was too much trouble for him.

Then it was back to our stateroom to unpack, before wandering around the ship, watching other passengers arriving, before we set sail at 5pm. Just before we sailed, we got a welcome message over the speakers fro our ship's captain, Kate McCue - yes a lady captain! [Link is to her Instagram page].

Celebrity's first female command and one with over 27 years experience at sea. As an aside, she also has over 3.5 million followers on Tik Tok, and has an onboard cat (more of that in a later post!).

As we sailed from Civitavecchia, we were accompanied by a pod of dolphins - fabulous. As the early cruise vibe picked up, we dressed for dinner (no black ties stuff here - smart casual the order of the day) and headed to one of the four main dining restaurants for a three course dinner and wine.  Here we caught up with one of my golfing buddies, his wife and two friends who completely unknown to me at the time, had booked the same cruise! Following this we took in the first of the show with magician Matt Johnson who was introduced by the extrovert, and wildly amusingArgentinian Cruise Director Alejandro Tortorelli [Instgram link]. He was by far and away the best of the three cruise director's we've experienced on our three cruises so far. Absolutely brilliant!  

After the excitement of the show, we headed to a quieter bar for a final cocktail before retiring. 

Celebrity Beyond's theatre

Tomorrow is a sea day, and as well as a behind the scenes tour we would be passing the volcano of Stromboli and passing through the Strait of Messina between the toe of Italy and Sicily.

Our destination port is Katakolon, the port for Olympia in Greece, where we had an excursion booked. But that's over 24 hours away...

Following the MSC Divina out to sea - she's going out backwards
Cunard's Queen Victoria (left) still moored

Useful (perhaps) food and drink facts/information

• Celebrity Beyond has 4 main dining restaurants each with a slightly different theme. Tuscan (Italian), Normandie (French), Cyprus (Greek/Turkish) and Cosmopolitan (American). Each has a menu with three sections, with starters, main (or entrees as they call them) and desserts. 1) Their own themed dishes. 2) Celebrity Signature dishes - the same across all four restaurants but the dishes change every night) 3) Celebrity Regulars Salmon, steak, chicken for the less adventurous.
• There's also a huge buffet restaurant, the "Oceanview" as well as some smaller snack options including a coffee/cake place
• There are a number of other "speciality" restraints throughout the ship that are available either at extra charge or dependent on the level of package you've booked. 
• There are loads of bars including a martini bar, a craft beer bar  - plenty to keep everyone happy.
• Our booking included the "classic" beverage package that included drinks up to $10 per serving (ie bottle of beer, glass of wine, etc). As a cost guide, a 330ml bottle of Heineken was listed at $9 so that was fine. A 330ml bottle of Peroni was listed at $11 so I'd have to have paid an additional $1.20 (indulging a further 20% gratuity). Wines were limited at $10 an under but sufficient for our needs. Upgrading to a premium drinks package would have cost us over $80 PER PERSON PER DAY and we'd both have had to have the package. You can't do it on an individual basis. SO toy need to think carefully about how much you're gong to drink over the curse of the cruise.

You can find a much bigger selection of our cruise photos on my Flickr pages

Twitter: @Statto1927 
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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 

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