Italy: Day 1 (Tuesday, June 29)

SO, I am outrageously far behind in my blogging, I KNOW! But I am working on it and am going to post as much as I can in the next few days to try to catch up!

After 2 days at sea, the MV Explorer arrived in Italy! The ship docked sometime during the night and I woke up in Civitavecchia (pronounced Chviv-a-ta-veck-ee-a) – sleepy little Italian city an hour from Rome, about five blocks long, all of which we saw before 10 AM the day that we arrived. Because the name of the town is difficult to say, I’ve just been referring to it as “the Chiv” to make it simpler. Plus it sounds funny.

So, Erin and I had big plans to rent a car and see some of the country side – but unfortunately all three of the rental places in the Chiv were out of automatics. Whua Whaaaa… After deciding that Italy was NOT the best place to learn how to drive a manual, we hopped over to the train station and for nine euros had a round trip ticket to Rome for the day!

Erin and I arrived in Rome at lunch time, randomly picked a place to visit, got on a bus outside of the Termini station, got on it and went about 6 stops too many before we realized it. Whoops! We walked for a while in a slightly deserted part of town and then finally gave up trying to figure out where we were and sat down at a quiet little pizzeria. The pizzas were bigger than the plate! Margarita pizza and a little red wine…what more could we ask for?

After refueling, we found Villa Borghese – a beautiful park in the middle of Rome, rented bikes, and rode around for about 2 hours. We saw cool views of the city, ate some (sadly) sub-par gelato, then walked ALMOST the entire bus route back because we didn’t have a ticket and we couldn’t buy it on the bus (for some reason). Turned out to be a blessing, though, because when we finally found bus tickets, I also bought an international phone card…and I use the term “card” loosely. It was really just a sketchy little receipt with an access code on it. I was able to call Momma from a payphone on street. I caught her before she went to work! It was so nice to say hi, even though the conversation was brief! (Miss you!)

After making another quick phone call to connect with our friends, Erin and I met up with Greg, Colleen, Haley, Amanda, and her friend David at the Pantheon. David is from Milan (Northern Italy), but went to college in the US with Amanda. He came down to Rome to hang with her for a few days and this was pretty much the best thing that could have happened to us. It was like we had a personal translator! Also, something funny is that Amanda told us that his name was pronounced “Dave-veed.” She started calling him that freshmen year because she “felt like he should have an Italian-sounding name.” haha So everyone called him that the entire visit, too! He was really laid back about it and it’s just one of those things that cracks me up!

We walked around to many of the beautiful plazas, walked to the Spanish Steps, and then found a cute little “ristorante” by the Piazza Populo (pronounced Poop-a-low). I had Spaghetti Carbonara – yum – and some wine. At the end of the meal, the restaurant owner gave us some homemade limoncello because we were such good customers. : ) Refreshing!

After dinner, we strolled back to the Pantheon in want of some more gelato… I remember from my 2006 visit that the best gelato place EVER is right down a side street of the Pantheon, so I guided our group in that direction. My memory served me well! In this gelato shop, there are about a hundred flavors and everything is so fresh. I had mango and raspberry (but only because I had chocolate and strawberry (fragola) – my favorite – earlier in the day…). SO good.

After gelato, we realized that we had to hustle to get the next train out of Rome, so the seven of us jumped into a small taxi van. The ride back to the train station was honestly the most frightening experience that I’ve ever had in a vehicle. Italian drivers are nuts. We went the OPPOSITE way down a one way street and literally came within a half an inch of flattening an individual riding a motorbike.

Anyway, we made it (with a little jogging to the platform). The trip back to the Chiv was long and I was super tired when we got back to the ship at 11:45 PM, so I only had energy for a shower before I collapsed into bed by 12:30 am. Such a good day. Sigh.