Roma!

MONDAY, MARCH 30th

Rough night. We are all on a sort of strange sleep schedule where we fall asleep at a normal time, but are wide awake for hours at around 2:00am. No different last night. The ship was really rolling through the night - it didn’t make anyone seasick, but you could certainly feel it! John, Will and I made it down to the breakfast buffet by 10:00am, where we sat outside on the deck. (Hello, cold!) We are definitely out at sea - no sight of any land in any direction. After breakfast we wandered a bit before heading back up to the cabin. Leah & Jack slept until around 1:00 pm, which I am hoping is not a mistake. Will that mess up their sleep even more, or are they just making up for lost zzzs? We’ll see. We all bundled up and walked up to lunch, followed by Jack & John playing basketball on the ship’s court. The weather warmed up quite a bit since breakfast, and the sun was out as well. It was a beautiful day at sea. Several brave souls even swam in the pool, although I personally cannot imagine how that could have been fun. After a little napping, internet-cafeing, and generally taking it easy, we got ready for dinner. Tonight was “formal night,” although with Norwegian’s “freestyle” cruising, you don’t have to dress up. We did not pack any really fancy clothes, but we did make an effort to look a little nice. After dinner we walked out on deck (Hello again, cold!), and watched the amazing landscape as the ship passed between the islands of Corsica and Sardinia. We are now just off the coast of Italy and are due to arrive in Civitavecchia by sunrise. We finished up the evening in a little pub listening to a fantastic musician play the acoustic guitar and sing Beatles tunes.


TUESDAY, MARCH 31

When we awoke this morning, the ship had already docked in Civitavecchia, Italy and was cleared for disembarkation by 7:00 am. We had a light breakfast in our cabin and headed out to meet our tour. For our day in Rome, we chose to take a tour bus into the city - the bus dropped us off at the Vatican and we were free to roam on our own for about five hours. Our first sight was the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. Very beautiful. Although, between you and me, I’m getting a little bug-eyed with the domes in Europe... this one looked a lot like St. Paul’s Cathedral in London, but what do I know? We walked through St. Peter’s Square, past the Castel San’t Angelo (site of Emperor Hadrian’s tomb), and over the Tiber River. We wandered through the beautiful narrow alleyways and cobblestone streets to Piazza Navona, stopping at a little outdoor cafe for a taste of some real Italian pizza. After lunch we headed towards the Pantheon, the only ancient Roman temple to survive the millennia virtually intact. The dome of the Pantheon is 142 ft wide, as well as high. It is the widest masonry dome in Europe - it is also open, so when it rains or snows, it pours right in (as does the sun!). The artist from the Renaissance, Raphael, is buried here. After exploring the Pantheon, we headed toward the Trevi Fountain. This fountain is grafted onto the palazzo (the building kind of morphs into the rocks), and is the end of the Acqua Vergine aqueduct, built by Agrippa in 19 BC. Tradition holds that if you throw coins into the fountain, you ensure your return to Rome. We only had one coin, so we gave Jack the honor of the toss - stand with your back to the fountain, toss with your right arm over your left shoulder - and he came through. We are hoping that since the coin was worth five euros (ouch), we can all come back. We kept walking until we found the famous Spanish Steps. We sat for a bit on the steps, along with hordes of French teenagers smoking cigarettes. John and Jack helped themselves to a drink from the fountain at Piazza di Spagna, and we were on our way back to the Vatican. During our walk, we ran into the Largo di Torre Argentina, ancient Roman ruins discovered in the 1920s. Here stood four temples, along with the Theater of Pompey - the exact spot where Caesar was killed in 44 BC. We made our way back across the Tiber and decided to check out the Sistine Chapel. The entrance to the Vatican Museum (and the chapel) is about 4,000 miles away from St. Peter’s Square. I am kidding, of course, but it is a crazy long walk, and by the time we got there, they were closing the Chapel and it was almost time to meet our group for the ride back to port. We did find time to indulge in a little gelato (when in Rome and all), and then we made our way back to the ship. We had a fantastic five hours in Roma... can’t wait to come back someday and see it all!

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1

I believe we all slept through the night last night! We lost another hour - we are crossing another time line and had to set our clocks forward again. We had a relaxing day at sea again today - the highlight of the day was mid morning when our ship passed through the Straights of Messina, a narrow waterway between the island of Sicily and Calabria, on the mainland of Italy. After we passed through, we headed out to sea towards the country of Greece.