World Cruise Blog - Day 35 - Rome, Italy

We woke up to another day of rain - ugh! I was determined to wear my ‘Ciao’ t-shirt in Italy, and this was my last chance, so I put it on with a long skirt to keep me warm, and a black sweater. I didn’t even bring my rain jacket since I determined to get some good pictures of myself in Rome. Turns out, I never took off my sweater, except at the Sistine Chapel, and even then, my scarf covered the words. Oh well…

Today, we were on our own - no cruise ship excursion for us since we’d both been to Rome before. We hopped on the train and got to Rome by about 9:45am.

In the train station waiting for our train.

We had Hop-on Hop-off bus tickets for the day, so that was our plan. After much walking and asking about 10 people, we found the bus stop and stood in line. Of course, as soon as our bus arrived, it started to rain, but the top was covered (open, but covered), so we decided to go up top for better picture taking opportunities. I knew we were in trouble when the bus company gave us plastic ponchos and the seats had puddles of water on them. We sat down anyway, and as soon as we took off, a wall of water came down from the top of the roof when we turned and drenched us. We immediately put on our ponchos, even though it didn’t look cool!

We took the bus for a few stops and got some decent pictures from the bus, passing by churches, the coliseum, the forum, the place where they had chariot races, an old theater, etc…

After about 30 minutes, we decided to get off near the Vatican, since we had tickets to skip the line to go into the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel at 2:00pm. We had some time to kill, so we took some pictures at the bridge in front of Castle Sant ‘Angelo, which I don’t remember seeing the last time I was in Rome. Everything in Rome is so impressive. There are so many places to explore there. I think you’d have to spend a few weeks just to feel like you’re covering the surface.

Then, we decided to eat lunch near the Vatican at a nice little Italian restaurant on a quaint street. Luckily, we had umbrellas covering us because it rained on and off the whole time. The food was good - pesto pasta, pizza and caprice salad.

When we were finished with lunch, it was 12:30pm, plenty of time to ‘hop over’ to The Pantheon and Piazza Navona, and still make our 2:00pm meeting time for the Vatican, right?

Well, we underestimated our timing a tad, and had 35 minutes to get back to the Vatican meeting point - a 20 minute walk from the main entrance - in the rain! Needless to say, we got soaked (I got splashed by a car), and had already logged in about 15K steps for the day, but we made it. We were booking it! Leslie’s legs are a little longer than mine, and she’s a little faster. The fact that I was wearing sandals didn’t help either. Whew!

I had already been into the Vatican Museum and seen the Sistine Chapel, but Leslie hadn’t, so it was fun to see her excitement, as it is overwhelming. If you haven’t been, I do highly recommend it. We got a couple of Christmas Ornaments at the Vatican since when are you ever going to get one of those again?

It was still raining upon our exit, but now we had time to actually go to the entrance of St. Peter’s Cathedral, take in its glory, and take some pictures.

Our last major priority in Rome was to go to the Spanish Steps, since neither of us had done that before. It is a Bucket List item for me. We hopped back on the bus, and traffic was at a dead stop. It literally took us 40 minutes just to get to the next stop. We got off on the stop near the Spanish Steps, and had to walk another 20 minutes in the rain to get to them from the bus stop.

After getting our fill of pictures, we realized that we needed to skip our nice dinner in Rome that we were planning, and get back to the train, so we could make it in time to get back on the ship. We had an hour to get to the train station, but the way the bus was moving, it was making me nervous (and we were leaving from another station than we came in, and wasn’t sure how close it was to a bus stop). We ended up catching a cab (much faster) and got to the train station with about 45 minutes to spare. We had a couple of slices of pizza (again), which was probably the best I’ve had so far, and got on the fast train back to the port. The shuttle bus from the train station to the port was no longer running, so another cab ride (20 euro for a 15 minute ride) and was dropped off right at the ship. Mom, we got back to the ship 45 minutes early - just so you can sleep tonight.

Anyway, Rome was quite an adventure in the rain. I wouldn’t recommend it, but we had fun all the same.

Tomorrow is a Sea Day, then Barcelona.