April 4, 2022

We arrived in Italy this morning, had breakfast and got ready for the team to change our room to one across the hall and mid ship.  This is because our desired type of cabin was not available on the first cruise and then it became available – so we had to move to the originally booked one for the second cruise.  They are back to back but were booked separately.

Well, it was amazingly well done. Before we knew it, all of the clothes on hangers were already in our new closet, and the suitcases that we just stuffed things into arrived as did our flowers.  We just had to carry our valuables.

This is the gateway to Rome.  Many of the friends we made on board were leaving, some staying on in Rome for a few days and one brother and sister who traveled together had an audience with the Pope to look forward to today!

We have spent several days in Rome before and with the room change, didn’t want to travel that far.  We had never explored Civitavecchia.  The town is just over a mile to walk to so after we settled in our new room, we headed out.  It is a beautiful sunny day today, mid 50’s, which is just about what we expected for all of the Mediterranean ports.

We shopped, visited the market (always a must for us), walked around the town and on the sea wall and stopped at a restaurant for a nice lunch.  We had a delicious wood fired vegetable pizza, salad, and Norm had a glass of red wine.  I had my usual daytime Coke Zero. The resident dog was nearby but never begging!

These amazing orchids are in the main area of the ship.

Lots of Mediterranean ports to come and new friends to meet.  This is a port intensive segment, only one sea day is expected and of course, we don’t know if any weather systems will prevent our visits but fingers crossed that we will get to go to the 5 cities we have not yet visited.

We expect the ship to be half full this voyage, about 600 people.

We leave at 6 PM today for Amalfi/Positano and in the meantime, we are on the deck reading and of course, I am posting this to the blog.