Saturday, August 6, 2016

Day 3 - Boarding the Boat - August 6



(pics to be added when we get home)
This was my favorite morning, and one that made me want to stay for a much longer period of time, in Rome.

We woke up fairly early because we had to make our way back to the airport.  I booked transfers from the airport to the cruise ship because it was an hour and a half drive, and this was just about the cheapest way to get there.  But before we did that I wanted to wake up and have some coffee at a café, and have a nice little pastry.

We got up and dressed pretty quickly and were on our way.  I previously looked up a location close to the hotel we could walk to, and that’s just what we did.  We mapped our way to a cute little café that turned out to be a chain.  They had great coffee and wonderful pastries.  Shawn had two mini cannoli, and I had a chocolate croissant.  

After our brief café visit, we stumbled upon a fruit market and purchased some fresh fruit – a peace for me, and a nectarine for Shawn.  Then we meandered a bit around a couple of the streets where people were selling shoes, and some clothes, then made our way back to the hotel to gather our belongings.

We packed fairly quickly, grabbed a taxi and headed to the airport, but not before almost forgetting to empty the hotel safe containing about $700 American dollars.  Thankfully I remembered just as we were walking out the door of the hotel and grabbed it before officially checking out.

We caught the taxi to the airport, and almost immediately got onto our bus to transfer to the ship.
Coming on the ship was a pretty cool experience.  Shawn and I are not novices when cruising.  I think this is cruise number twelve or fifteen for us – we’ve lost count.  But this ship is amazing.  It’s HUGE!  Like SUPER huge.  The central area of the ship is about 3 stories high and is magnificent.  This ship also has a dancing fountain water feature on the main deck at the top, and has bars all over the place.  The other difference of this ship is that it has a massive buffet.  It has three or four aisles of food to choose from, and with over 3,000 people aboard, I can see why that is needed.  

The cruise line gave us the perk of an all-inclusive drink package, which means that all bottles of water, cans of coke and ALL ALCOHOL are included the first week we are on board the ship.  My comment to Shawn last night after my forth glass of wine was “oh, this could be dangerous”.  We’ll see.  I usually don’t drink back to back days at home – my body can’t handle it with all the walking I usually do, but we’ll see how this cruise pans out…..

In the evening we made our way to the back of the boat where there’s a bar and met some pretty cool people from Utah and Australia.  We chatted with them for a couple of hours (thus the multiple glasses of wine), then had dinner.  

The plan for tomorrow is to go see the leaning tower of Pisa, but the kicker is that we have no plans of how to get there.  We have a fun saying these days that is holding pretty true:  “fun adventures with Carol”.  It means Carol has no plans and we just pretty much see where the day or experience takes us.

So tomorrow our plan is “fun adventures with Carol” time.  I’ll keep you posted…..