Day 17 - Monday, 11/25/24 - Civitavecchia - Day 1

 After an easy overnight sail, we docked in Civitavecchia, Italy which is the port city for Rome.  I remember the vibration and sound of the propellers and the thruster around 6am but that wasn't enough to cause me to get out of bed.  We ate our customary breakfast and met up with our small group of 2 other couples.  Alson and Martha were the leaders and Lynne (her husband Ross couldn't make it as he needed to rest up after a couple of strenuous days in Livorno. Russ and Lynne are Alson and Martha's  long time friends.  I met them over the internet through Cruise Critic and we ended up joining them on a number of independent excursions on this voyage.  


We scanned off the ship and then waited for a shuttle bus to take us outside the port to the parking lot just outside the port gate.  Since all of us had been to Rome previously, our excursions. In this two day stop, would not visit Rome.  At the parking lot we soon met our guide, Susanna and our driver, Andreas.  Leaving the busy port city, we drove to the Tomba dei Tori, which is an ancient Etruscan civilization burial tomb.  There are a number of them in this area, some of which have been archaeologically excavated, but many remain undisturbed.  Since it was a Monday, the local museum devoted to the tombs was closed.


Tomba dei Tori



From the tombs, we headed to Tarquinia where we strolled around and visited the city hall with an exquisite city council chambers.  It's located in an ancient former church building.  Leaving Tarquinia, we drove to an old monastery, San Guista, which has been and is in the process of being restored by an archeologist.  It's now operated as a bed and breakfast and other types of activities.

Group photo at Tarquinia City Hall


From the monastery, we drove to Susanna's home in Vetralla where we enjoyed appetizers, a terrific concert with Aurora, soprano, Stefano, tenor, and accompanied by a maestro on the piano.  We also met Susanna's husband, Rudolph, and his brother, Franz.  After the concert, they served us a spectacular multi-course lunch.  I personally enjoyed some terrific conversation with Rudolph and Franz.   And all too soon it was time for Andreas and Susanna to drive us back to the ship where they dropped us off at the shuttle bus stop.

  

Stefano, Maestro, & Aurora 


Rudolph and Susanna

Back at the ship, we caught most of the 6:30pm and all of the 8pm string duo classical concert before watching the 3 coins in the Fountain movie in the Wajang theater.  And so ended a pretty full day.


I do recommend seeing the mounds and museum for the Etruscan tombs (not on a Monday) and Tarquinia.  Tarquinia can easily be reached by public bus for €1.50.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Day 29 - Saturday, 12/07/24 - La Goulette, Tunisia

Image
After a somewhat rough sail from Malta to La Goulette, Tunisia, we found ourselves docked at the industrial port for Tunis. This was to be our first time visiting Tunisia and we were looking forward to a good day. After breakfast, we met up with our small group of six and scanned off the ship. For this port, we had to fill out arrival cards, which were barely examined by the local authorities, and we retained 1/2 which we surrendered when we returned to the ship later that day. We met up with our guide and he escorted us over to a white Ford transit van which would be our transportation for the day. We ended up with two male guides, and one of them was quite an expert in history (Yazid), and the other (F) was more of a local oriented guide. Two things immediately surprised me. The first was that our driver was a woman. This is the first time that I can recall in all of our years of cruising that we've had a woman driver and here we are in an Arab nation. Further as we began to driv...
Read more

Day 25 - Tuesday, 12/03/24 - Cairo

Image
 On this or second day in Cairo, I'm going to depart for my normal style of just talking about what we did and talk more about observations of the culture and what I see around us.  But first, I will give a description of what we did for the day.  Our day started with awakening to a smoggy sky with the glow of the now rising sun, overlooking the Nile river with couple groups of rollers doing their early morning practice down the still and calm waters of the river. The buffet breakfast in the hotel was the most lavish we have ever experienced. One whole wing of the buffet was pastries and the lake and the other section was devoted to cooked items and one could order an omelette or fried eggs cooked to order. We met our guide Ahmed at 7:25 AM and boarded our little minivan and drove to the first set of pyramids at Saqqara. This site is according to our guide the first recorded location where stone was used for construction of buildings. The pyramid here is of a step nature ...
Read more

Day 39 - Tuesday, 12/17/24 - At Sea to Florida - Day 5

Image
 It was nice to have a calm ride overnight. As is our custom we were up early to get ready for the daily interdenominational devotional time. Nick's coffee chat guest was the future cruise consultant, Melane who is from South Africa.  Ida then gave a talk on Columbus and the Pinzon Brothers. After lunch Captain Adams gave his Ask The Captain presentation which was quite unlike any we have previously seen.  He opened by answering a few questions which had been previously deposited in his question box at the front desk.  He then spoke about how the ship was used to house over 1,500 Ukrainian refugees (primarily women & children) in the spring and summer of 2023 in Rotterdam.  We had a cruise cancelled because of the ship being chartered out for that humanitarian event.  He also spoke more about the drydock and indicated that $20,000,000 was expended on the repairs and maintenance.  This likely means that the ship, which is 25 years old, will be in se...
Read more