The next amazing stop on our whirlwind Honeymoon cruise aboard the Norwegian Spirit was Roma, Italia!
We decided to do Rome on our own by taking the train, along with several people from our Cruise Critic roll call. The ship actually docks in Civitavecchia, which is quite a distance from Rome. We wanted to get on the 8:40am train so we all met up at 7:30am in the atrium and walked off the ship together. We were one of the first groups on the shuttle bus we had to take to the end of the port, and from there we walked to the train station, with a stop to buy our ticket at the little stand at the exit of the port. We had heard that the lines here were much better than the lines at the station. We made it to the train station with 10 minutes to spare!
The train ride went smooth and having people to talk with made the approx 45 minute ride fly by. We exited from the Roma Ostiense station which is closest to The Forum and Colosseum, and we shared a taxi to the Circus Maximus with another family from our roll call. We all then went inside The Forum where we split because I had a bathroom emergency. Tim and I walked all around and finally found the bathroom, and then we couldn’t find our starting point for our downloaded audio tour (by Rick Steves – highly recommended) because we failed to pick up maps at the entrance. We thought we had a map but it turns out our map was only a fraction of the grounds. We wasted a lot of time walking around the ruins until we finally found our starting point. From there we did our audio tour which took about an hour.
Just walking around the Forum and soaking up all its history is really astounding. To think some of these structures were built thousands of years ago, without the use of modern tools and computers – wow.
After the Forum we went just a short walk to the Colosseum and did the audio tour and spent about an hour inside the Colosseum.
Up on the top level we had great views of the Arch of Constantine and the entrance to The Forum.
The Colosseum is so massive and there is so much to see but we were behind schedule so we took a taxi to the Trevi Fountain. The Trevi Fountain was packed and we were really hungry and cranky and didn’t want to deal with the crowds at the moment, so we walked a couple blocks and found a restaurant who said they could make us a pizza real quick, so we sat down and shared a glass of wine and a pizza with oregano and garlic (no cheese! Turns out that some pizza doesn’t automatically come with cheese).
After that we went back to the Trevi and threw our coins in.
After the Trevi we popped into the Pantheon to bask in some more history and see some free art.
Next we walked to Piazza Navona and browsed around before heading to our real lunch destination, Cafe Montecarlo, which allegedly had the best pizza in Rome. I ordered the four cheese pizza which had blue cheese and was amazing! Tim ordered the salami pizza which had big thick slices of salami. Everything was delicious and not too pricey. My pizza was 8 euros and it was huge, and I’m proud to say I ate all of it.
After eating lunch we walked over to Vatican City and St. Peters Basilica and took some quick pictures before heading to the train station Roma San Pietro.
We wanted to get to the train station really early in case something happened with the train. We had a moment of panic when we couldn’t figure out what platform we needed to be on, but eventually we figured it out and when we got there we saw some of our friends form the roll call. We all took the train back together and once we got off the train in Civitavecchia we stopped for gelato and took a leisurely stroll along the waterfront, since we got back so early.
After we got back on the ship we took a nap and then ate a late dinner in the buffet before dropping some bills in the casino. We actually stayed up pretty late (for us) and went to bed around 1am. No rest for the wicked … the next day was our stop in Naples, Italy!
Past Honeymoon Posts:
Chapter 1 – All Aboard the Norwegian Spirit!
Chapter 2 – Barcelona, Spain
Chapter 3 – Toulon and Bandol, France
Chapter 4 – Florence, Italy
