Friday, November 10 – Roamin’

We were docked in Civitivecchia today, the closest port to Rome.  Close is relative since the city of emperors is still an hour’s drive away.  We did the “grand tour” of antiquities in 2009 when we arranged a tour which included the Vatican Museum, the Sistine Chapel, the Pantheon and catacombs.  We also drove past lots of other old stuff.  In 2011, we toured outside the city but did a little sight-seeing there on the way back to the ship as mentioned yesterday.  We have yet to visit St. Peter’s itself as a matter of principal; we refuse to pay to visit the grandest church of the richest religion in the world.

With all of that as background, it is no wonder we had made no plans for the day.  If we had considered taking public transit [i.e., the train], we might still be in Rome rather than in our cabin because there was supposed to be a transit strike in Rome today.  Maybe the trains would run on schedule and maybe not; Mussolini would not have been happy.  As it turned out, everyone returned to the ship on schedule.

D hoped to take advantage of WiFi in the terminal to email cell phone photos to himself in order to post them here.  The process was slow on shipboard and ate up a lot of our internet package so the thought of free internet was appealing.  Once again, ideas do not always correlate to reality.  First, he had to take a shuttle to the terminal, except there was no terminal.  It is under construction near the ship.  Passengers boarding or disembarking today had to use a tent-like facility which was strictly a warehouse for luggage.  The shuttle passed this and continued through the commercial port and into the town.  

After passing several sets of ancient brick gateways, the shuttle pulled into a parking lot.  There were several benches under an open-sided tent, a billboard with instructions on connecting to the internet and several staffers directing passengers to public transportation or giving them maps of the city.  After all of the travel and sitting on the bench in the cold, he was unable to make a connection.  He reversed the journey via the shuttle bus and went back to the ship in defeat.

The rest of the day was spent resting, reading and wrestling with the Friday NYT crossword which actually seemed easier than yesterday’s.  We thought briefly about viewing a movie but didn’t.  Before supper we attended the mandatory boat drill, our second of the cruise.  Passengers are required to attend one every 30 days.  Although we have not been aboard that long, we picked up new passengers today who needed to attend, so we all did and got it out of the way; there will be no more drills for the remainder of the trip.

Dinner followed quickly after the drill and we had a bird’s-eye view of our departure from Civitivecchia.  As mentioned earlier, our table is by the rear window of the MDR, so we had no trouble seeing where we were going as the captain backed up and turned around.  We watched the city disappear into the darkness.

TOMORROW – Nothing in Naples


Comments

  1. MinNovember 10, 2017 at 4:56 PM

    FYI....there isn't any charge to go into St. Peter's. We were just there in October. Next time. It's a definately must see.

    ReplyDelete

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