We are up earlier than planned, and packed and ready to go well in advance of our stated 9am departure. So, we cool our heels a bit, and then text Francesca to tell her we are leaving early. The cleaning lady comes – and speaks no English, but still has a huge long conversation with me – explaining something – not sure what - but she gets we are waiting for Francesca and goes to get her. We think! Again, she comes back and apologizes, she was supposed to clean the other apartment unit, not ours. I try to tell her we are leaving and she can clean this one too…she finally says she will get Francesca to say “bye bye.” Too cute.
Ed takes our bags out to the car, then we finally find Francesca, settle up our city taxes and parking bill, and bid her a fond farewell. She is so sweet – and Internet issues aside – we’ve loved staying here.
We easily navigate out of the garage and out of the city – we’re pros at this now. We make a pit stop at the Coop to buy some electrical tape (to fix our rapid charger) and regular scotch tape to attach our luggage tags, and we are on the road a little after 9.
TIM leads us to the autostrada, then off onto these little teeny lanes through the countryside, again with cars racing past us and trucks heading right toward us on curves. We don’t remember this from last year – and keep thinking this can’t be right. Then we hit Bomarzo – a little hill town with narrow little streets that we have to navigate up and through. Again, we’re convinced this isn’t right, but we have to blindly follow TIM’s directions or we’re toast. So, up we go, then back out into the country. Eventually we end up back on the highway – which is definitely what we remember from before. We think TIM just took us a sneaky way to get to the highway to Civitavecchia. Ah, those tricky little GPS people!
Finally back on the right track we relax a bit and end up getting to Civitavecchia way earlier than we planned. Navigating here is a snap, we’ve been here so often it’s like home now. This time we can drop the car off in the Europcar bay – as opposed to last year when it was so crazy crowded we had to try to stuff it into a spot on the street. Because we are the only customers there, check out goes fast, and we are walking to the RCL shuttle in no time.
Once at the terminal, we drop the bags and actually check in before 11am. Amazing. One of the smoothest check in’s ever – virtually walked right on. And there are tons of people already aboard. We have to wait for the buffet to open, it is that early! But at 11:30, the doors open and we go snag a nice 2-top to spend the next hour and a half until the staterooms are ready.
Shopping the buffet proves difficult! They have crawfish. Really! I’m in heaven – and fill my plate as full as I dare.
Cool! I’m happy. A salad as a side, and lunch is handled.
Later, we wait patiently for 1:00 and our cabin to be available. At 1:00, the doors on some of the floors are opened, but ours is not. We wait another few minutes, then just open the door ourselves. Our cabin is ready (we think it was the only one) and our cabin steward introduces himself – he’s incredibly nice, and even though they’ve not officially “released” their cabins yet, he lets us go into ours – which is a relief because we are tired of hauling our heavy backpacks all over.
After relieving ourselves of our burdens, we explore the ship, re-familiarizing ourselves with the layout. We search out our luggage (if you know where to look, you can go grab it and not have to wait for the attendants to bring the luggage to you), and unpack quickly. Head to the Muster drill, then up to the lounge, then to the cabin for a gorgeous sunset…
…and off to dinner, the lounge, music in the atrium and an end to a lovely first night at sea.
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