Saturday, May 14, 2011

Room Service for breakfast -- on time.

This was an early day and very tiring.  Our driver picked us up at 7:30 am and we drove to Rome from Civitavecchia this morning.  It took us a little over an hour to get there.  Our reservations at the Vatican weren't until 9:30 am so our driver drove us around a little until our guide arrived.  Our guide was Peppe.  He was the same guide that Krista and her friends had over spring break.  When we arrived there, the lines were terrible but we didn't have to wait in line because we had pre-purchased our tickets.  He took us to the Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica.  It was very tiring but interesting.  Since I am not Catholic, I am sure I didn't appreciate it as others may.  This tour took a little over 2 hours.  After the tour he took us across the shop to a gift shop where we could use the restroom and buy something if we were interested.  I didn't take a lot of pictures because I didn't think I could do them justice so I purchased a book at the gift shop.

We were tired and hungry after the tour so our driver took us to a restaurant in the neighborhood where he lived.  Mary P and I shared a 4 cheese pizza and some wine.  I also ordered some fried mozzarella for the table.  Pat was drinking coffee and she said it was good so I had a cup of coffee also.  Actually it was a glass of hot coffee.  I had to use my napkin to pick it up because it was so hot.  After lunch we asked the driver to take us by the colosseum so we could see where the metro station was there.  We have a tour scheduled there next Sunday and wanted to know where we needed to go.

On the way back to the port everyone went to sleep except for me and I was wide awake.  I was nervous we would get back to the ship late because the driver said that sometime on Saturday the traffic was bad and it could take as long as 2 hours to get back because people went to the beach on the weekends.  No worries -- we got back 30 minutes before all aboard time.

They are having the lifeboat drill at 4:00 pm which we don't have to go to this time so we are relaxing in our room.  At 5:15 pm we are going to the spa to see if we can win something this time.  The show tonight should be a repeat of the first night of our cruise.  We have an early day tomorrow so we will probably just relax tonight after dinner.