A quiet day (Civitavecchia)

This morning we arrived in the port town of Civitavecchia, which serves the city of Rome.  Amerigo Vespucci was right outside our cabin (he was the explorer for whom America is named for reasons I’ve never understood):

We were scheduled to take a bus into Rome for the day, but we decided to skip it and spend a quiet day on the ship instead.  There were a couple of reasons - it was a two-hour bus ride each way and four hours isn’t enough time to even scratch the surface in Rome, the weather forecast suggested the possibility of rain, and we’d have to get up very early (like 6 am) to have time for breakfast before we had to leave.  When John suggested skipping Rome, I was all for it.  In fairness, I was just there a few months ago, but I would have gone if John wanted to.

Sleeping in was great, and by the time we went to breakfast, we nearly had the place to ourselves.

After a very leisurely morning and a fairly late lunch, we decided to take the port shuttle bus into the town of Civitavecchia (Italian for “old city”) to walk around and check it out.  The bus dropped us off fairly near the center of town, and municipal employees were there with maps and information - and the information was that nearly everything was closed on Mondays (today is Monday), and the few things that were open closed at 3 pm, (it was just about 3 pm when we arrived).

So we set off walking, planning to just look around at the sites.  These were the sites:


There may be nice parts of town, but, if so, they’re nowhere near the waterfront.

I spotted this building with the flags and wondered if it might be a US consulate or something,

John checked it out - it’s a hotel.

Before long we headed back to the ship.

We got back in time for a “virtual tour” of the ship’s bridge and engine room.

After dinner in the dining room, we called it a day.  Relaxing is so tiring!





Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

First day in Venice,

Image
Despite our best efforts, including getting out and walking in the fresh air and staying up until 10:00 pm Venice time, we both woke up at around 3:30 am with our brains telling us it was time to get up.   We had a hearty breakfast at our hotel before starting the day. The photo’s a bit deceiving - the breakfast room was busier than this looks.  John noted that after Italian, Russian was the most common language he heard,  both at the hotel and throughout the city. We started off by buying 24-hour passes for the vaporetto - passenger boats that serve as Venice’s answer to city buses.  According to Google (would Google lie?), the term “vaporetto” comes from the fact that they were originally steam-powered (vapor=steam). Buying the tickets should have been an easy process using the ticket kiosks at the dock.  But I couldn’t get the contactless card reader to read my credit card.  Other people seemed to be having some difficulty with it, but they were eventual...
Read more

Off to the Pyrenees

Image
This morning we disembarked from the cruise ship and set off by car to the medieval town of La Seu d’Urgell in the Pyrenees. After we got off the ship, we needed to go to the car rental center at the airport.  We’d asked the cab driver yesterday how much it costs for a taxi ride to the airport - he said €40.  We shouldn’t have believed him since he was the guy who charged us €12 for a €7.40 fare.  So we loaded up our bags in the back of a taxi and asked how much the ride would cost - €60.  John said we’d been quoted €40.  Driver said €55.  John said nope, and we unloaded our bags, to the disbelief of several taxi drivers who’d been watching. I’m so glad my friend Linda Joslin taught me how to use Uber.  I ordered a taxi van - exactly like the one we’d eschewed - and he arrived in 2 minutes and charged €44 (which included the two airport surcharges).  And the driver was cheerful and helpful.  And we were cheerful. Moral of the story:  whe...
Read more

Split, Croatia

Image
Today we’re in Split. Apparently there are lines of people waiting their turns to get photographed at this iconic location during the tourist season.  Despite the fact that the cruise historian talked about this last night, we were the only ones who posed here.  We’re thinking we may have been the only ones of the MANY tour participants who bothered to go to the lecture and learn about what we were going to see today. What we were going to see is Diocletian’s Palace, the heart of the city.  Diocletian, in case you weren’t paying attention in class that day, was a 3rd century Roman emperor infamous for being one of the nastiest persecutors of Christians.  He was born in a town near Split, and decided to build a retirement palace in Split where he spent his last years. The history here goes back way further, though.  Split is on the Dalmatian coast in a region first settled by the Illyrians, who predated the Romans.  The name Dalmatian comes from their langua...
Read more