Day 14 (Saturday, May 27, 2023) - Civitavecchia to Rome, Italy, Celebrity Beyond 12 night Mediterranean Cruise

Day 14 – Rome (May 27, 2023)

We had one last breakfast in Luminae where I had the Eggs in Purgatory one last time. It’s still my favorite breakfast of the whole cruise. They were sweet enough to store our carry on bags near the entrance so we didn’t have to keep them with us during our meal. We thanked our waiter, Alvin, and our hostess, Oktarina, for the wonderful job they did and promised to fill out a cruise survey.

We headed down to deck 4 for disembarkation and then located our luggage pretty easily. Lisa and Tim found a porter for their luggage and, after locating Wade’s lost garment bag (didn’t have a tag so it was put in the “untagged” pile), we found our driver that took us to the same hotel in Rome we stayed at in the beginning: Harry’s Bar Trevi.

Our rooms weren’t ready so we stowed our luggage and waited for our tour guide. Seth and I went next door to the cafe to have some coffee and a donut. We got back to the hotel well before our 10 am tour but when our guide hadn’t shown up yet at 10 after, I called Kensington and was told that our tour wasn’t until 10:30 am.

We met our tour guide and can’t, for some reason, remember what her name was. Probably because we really didn’t care for her style and even I was super annoyed by the end of the tour (which we ended early) by her methods. Our first stop was the Vatican museum which was really interesting. Our guide was clearly knowledgeable and very passionate but the constant commentary with a ton of minutiae which we’ll never remember got annoying very quickly. The Vatican was super crowded and it was getting a bit warm outside. We stopped at a couple of pictures to discuss what we would be seeing at the Sistine Chapel since the chapel is quiet and tour guides are expected not to say anything while inside the chapel. The explanations of the different pictures was very interesting.

When we entered the museum, we got “in line” and followed this line through multiple rooms and displays. Our tour guide was annoyed (and so were we) that there was no way to bypass seeing every single room of the museum and going straight to the chapel. It was bad enough having to follow the masses into every single room but what made it worse was that our guide was pointing out every little thing in each room and talked constantly into our whisper devices that, for a period, we were taking the ear piece out of our ears just for a break. She also had a really bad habit of charging forward without us and we had to fight other tourists to try and catch back up to her.

The Sistine Chapel was amazing, bigger than I thought it would be. There was no talking allowed while in the chapel and they didn’t seem to be very picky about tourists wearing shorts or women with spaghetti-strap tops. We hung out in the chapel for a little while and I was glad that our tour guide explained the different depictions before we got into the chapel – it made more sense.

We fought the crowds to get to St Peter’s Basilica next – the largest cathedral in the world. It was really impressive and so interesting to see the different styles of the artists who were in charge of depicting the different popes through the ages. Marble was everywhere and the grandness of the basilica can’t be overstated.

We walked for a bit and then met up with our driver who took us to Piazza Navona for lunch – she recommended a restaurant called Tre Scalini and when I asked her what the name meant, she didn’t know and asked one of the waiters who pointed toward the 3 steps coming out of the building where the kitchen was. I was so happy to see parmigiana di melanzane (eggplant parmigiana) on the menu again. It was delicious and I ate every bit of it along with a glass of white wine.

We walked to the Pantheon and then over to the Roman Forum where we could see the forum ruins. We were pretty worn out by this point and it was only 4 pm and our reservation for a tour at the Colosseum wasn’t until 5 pm. We decided to call it a day and just had our guide and driver go by the Colosseum and then take us back to our hotel. Our tour guide was quite offended that we wanted to end the tour early even though we explained that we had dinner reservations at 7:30 and wanted to get back to the hotel to change and freshen up.

We both took a shower and changed for our dinner reservation at il Pagliaccio. Wade decided he didn’t want to join us for dinner but we met downstairs for cocktails before dinner. We said our goodbyes to Wade and had the hotel call a taxi for us which we met down at the end of the alley. The ride was like being in a Mario Cart – fast/slow, stop/start, and very very bumpy. I’ll never understand why anyone would want to be a taxi driver in Rome – it’s absolutely crazy.

We got to il Pagliaccio at around 7:10 and had to awkwardly wait outside until they opened at 7:30 pm. When we were let into the restaurant, we let them know that Wade couldn’t make it so they converted our table to just 4 and pulled the other table away. They set it up for 2 people and, surprisingly, that table got filled a little later.

We did the 10-course tasting and pairing. The service was super good, the food presented like art, and most of what we had was wonderful. There was one chocolate-covered candy interlude that I’m still not sure what was in the center but I had to wash it down with water. The rest was quite good.

We had the restaurant call us a taxi to take us back to the hotel and repacked a few things then went to bed. Pick up in the morning was going to be at 6:30 am.

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