Tuesday 13th September - Civitavecchia (for Rome)
We slept well after such a hectic day but still woke quite early in our next port Civitavecchia. The all ashore time was 7 am but our tour meeting time wasn't until 8.30 am so we weren't in such a rush this morning. Cabanas opened at 6.15 am so we headed up to there for breakfast sitting outside as normal
Civitavecchia was not a scenic port, like most of them on this cruise they are industrial ports as opposed to those you find on the Caribbean itineraries which seem more for cruise lines. Still, it didn't bother us as we weren't spending any time there!
Picking a tour for Rome was tricky, so much choice and we wanted to see as much as possible. We didn't want to spend all day sitting on a coach though and after picking an expensive excursion for Naples we wanted to try and keep the cost down. We did also consider making our own way in to Rome (we are quite use to using public transport so that doesn't bother us) it was the thought of something going wrong with the train and us missing the ship! In the end we picked Highlights of Rome as this seemed to give us most of what we wanted.
We made our way down to Fathoms and were lead to the coach in the normal fashion, boarded the coach and met our guide and went for the 90 minute or so drive in to Rome. The coach did stop en-route at a service station for toilets etc.
The first stop was for the Colosseum and the coach parked just along the road
Wow it was busy. We had over an hour here which wasn't long enough to go into the Colosseum but felt a bit too long otherwise. There were people everywhere trying to sell tours into the Colosseum (I think it was some type of queue jump with a private guide) but we just had a wander around the outside and then walked around the surrounding area to see more historical stuff! The guide had said that almost everything inside the Colosseum had been rebuilt, the original bits could all be seen from the outside. We're not really history people (which maybe is why we felt it was too long) but were still in awe of seeing something of such significance.
We re-boarded the coach and went for a short drive to our next stopping point which was near the Piazza del Popolo, the point for the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps (which in true tradition for us were under renovation!). We could still see the steps though but they were sealed off. We had a couple of hours here and I had used Google Maps before we had left to work out how doable it would be to do everything we wanted and it was possible, so we set off wandering.
We saw everything we wanted to see and had a good wander round. We had lunch in McDonalds because we wanted something quick and cheap and headed back to the coach for the meeting time. Unfortunately we were late leaving as a couple were late (I think they got lost) but when they turned up we went for the short drive to the Vatican.