Today we said farewell to the ship…I’m happy to be getting
on with the next phase of the vacation, but moving on is always a bit ☹.
The distance from the port to our hotel in Rome is about a 75 min drive…mostly on highway. The pickup from the port is extremely easy and smooth. We pre-booked a ride…for the same price as a taxi, a guy was waiting for us with my name on a sign, whisked us into
a Mercedes, knew where we were
going, and got us there no problem! FYI…for a private ride to the airport (not
into Rome) the cruise wanted to charge 500 USD to arrange it! I knew the price
for the cruise to do it would be high…we’ve seen those prices before, but I have
to say I was surprised at how high the price was. We hopped the
price for the
cruise to do it wouldn’t be crazy high, because we had some on-board-credit to
spend. It always sounds good to have this credit (and it isn’t the worst problem
to have), but there is truly NOTHING we need to buy on board...everything is
included. In the past we’ve used this credit for the spa, but this trip was
just too busy off of the boat. In the end…Chris got a pair of swim trunks (not
European style!) and I could find nothing, and I mean nothing in the ship’s
boutique that was remotely interesting. In the end I spent 200.00 on 8 tubes of
foot cream at the spa! This is stuff I use everyday, so I know I’ll use it. I
was a bit concerned about getting it home, until the spa guy told me if I spent
over 200.00 on product that I could ship it for 20.00…SOLD! I had exactly
220.00 to spend.
Anyway, when we arrived at the hotel the room wasn’t ready,
so off we headed into the incredible heat. We hunted shade all the way to the Vatican.
We have tickets to get into the Vatican catacombs on Thursday, so we figured it
was a good idea to find out where exactly where at the Vatican we actually
needed to be – these tickets are for a specific time…late…forget it.
Then we walked a bit more, had a drink, walked a bit more
and settled on a spot for lunch. I had bruschetta and Chris had lasagne…both
were delicious. Things aren’t cheap here…we hardly expected cheap in a big
city. Food is what we’ve been seeing recently, but booze is a more.
After one quick stop
at the local piggly-wiggly for water and snacks we checked into the hotel,
showered and passed out for a while. I tried to get my chip-quest back on, but
the Italians bamboozled me. What I thought was a flavoured chip turned out to
be plain with the picture on the bag suggesting what a chip could be turned
into…disappointment! In the end it was a chip-quest disappointment, but we had
no problem ploughing though half the bag in one go…I’ve had some much bigger disappointments
in my quest for interesting chips…so much so that after eating one, the rest
were pitched…a chip has got to be pretty bad for me to pitch it!
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