We departed the ship in Civitavecchia at 8:15. We found disembarking to be very easy — it’s one of the benefits of passengers rolling on and off the manifest at most of the ports-of-call. You simply don’t have the mad crush of an entire ship disgorging itself all at once.

We met our driver at 8:25 for the trip to the airport (€150), which took about an hour.

Check-in had a little bit of a queue at British Airways, but it wasn’t too annoying despite my lack of status with the airline. All told, we had to waste about two hours before our scheduled boarding time.

Unfortunately, once we’d boarded the plane, we sat on the tarmac for nearly an hour while they struggled to load and unload the luggage. It seemed they were mysteriously short-handed in the baggage handling department?

The flight was otherwise uneventful, and I managed (finally — they’ve been out on other BA flights) to enjoy one of BrewDog’s Speedbird 100 Transatlantic IPAs (brewed to commemorate the centennial of BA and named, of course, for Concorde).

We were about 45 minutes late into London as a result of the baggage snafu, which further delayed our arrival at our hotel due to increased traffic during rush hour. Nonetheless, we made it to our (very small, otherwise fine) rooms at the Hotel Xenia by around 5:45.

After dropping off our baggage, we left for dinner at The Bolton, a nearby pub with excellent food and beer.

Mom and Emerson had burgers (British beef/cheddar and wild boar/chorizo, respectively). Libby enjoyed the bangers and mash, and I went for a traditional steak and cheese pie:

All in all, this made for a nice “welcome to London” end to our day.

We left the ship around 8:30, took a shuttle bus out of the port, and then a taxi (€15 euro, maybe a rip off?) from the cruise terminal to the train station, which saved us a 30 minute, uphill walk.

Once at the train station, I bought us Cinque Terre Train Cards, which included unlimited train transport, bathrooms, WiFi, and use of the trails within the Cinque Terre National Park. This was €58 euro for the four of us (including a book) — which was about the cost of a single “on your own” excursion organized by the ship. Of course, it put the burden on us to “figure things out,” but that was no problemo to me. The trains just run in two directions and the villages are only a few minutes apart.

We opted to take start at the most distant village and work our way back, which minimized our return travel time (in case… whatever happened).

The train journey isn’t very scenic. Most of your time is spent in tunnels. Indeed, you only get brief views of the villages and seaside at the stations themselves… assuming you didn’t stop in a tunnel there too!

Our first stop was at Monterosso al Mare, which is the flattest of the villages and seemed to have the most beach / coastline too.

Next we moved on to Vernazza with its attractive natural harbor:

We then skipped Cornilgia in the interest of time, as the trains run every 30 min or so. Thus, one wants to be judicious about hops on and off lest you waste a lot of time in the stations.

Instead, we moved on to Manarola, where we enjoyed a lovely fried calamari and potato lunch while walking around the village and along the cliff side walkway:

Or, final stop was in Riomaggiore for a look around (and some dessert — always good to have a traveling feast):

We then boarded one of the trains for our quick trip back to La Spezia. Since we had enough time remaining before our ship was scheduled to depart, we ambled down through the town and along the water front to the cruise terminal. Like Genoa, this feels like a real, “lived in” place too. It doesn’t get a lot of attention from the guidebooks, but we thought it was a perfectly nice town and could have happily spent more time exploring it.

I really like days like today when we see lots of new things and I get to put my travel skills to good use. That’s always especially fun… savoring both the place and my small victories as a traveler of the world.

We grabbed a quick dinner at the buffet and otherwise spent the rest of the evening getting ready to depart the ship in the morning.

Work continued to be a source of interruption and frustration for me, as it’s been for most days of this trip. I’m planning to avoid that in the future, if at all possible, as I’m gone a lot for work anyway so would rather be fully present when I am with Libby and Emerson.

Genoa has a storied history as a major port city — arriving via ship seemed very apropos. It feels “lived in,” which I mean in a nice way. I like the contrast between its narrow medieval lanes and grand piazzas.

Unfortunately, being a Monday the city’s museums were closed. Alas, this is one of the challenges of cruising: arriving in port for a one day visit that doesn’t align with local happenings.

We did, however, make limoncello out of our lemons by enjoying a gourmet pizza lunch at Savo — top quality ingredients, made with care. Just my kind of place:

We spent a bit more time wandering around the old port area (which had been revitalized) before returning to the ship.

For dinner, we ate at the ship’s teppanyaki restaurant, which was one of the best teppanyaki meals I’ve ever had in terms of both flavor and the show (which was participatory). Here’s Emerson trying to flip an egg on a spatula:

Note: I’ve noticed the images and text of some of my prior posts are kind of, to used the technical term, “screwed up.” As I’m already behind by many days in my posts and am working off of only an iPhone — I’ll have to fix these issues later. Apologies to my loyal readers… all 3, maybe 4, of you.

Today was our final (partial) day in Rome.

Since we only had the morning available and had already visited most of the major sights (and St. Peter’s was a non-starter for the morning due to the Pope’s audience), we opted to visit something a little less on the usual tourist path: Villa Farnesina.

It also had the advantage of being only about a 30 minute walk away along the banks of the Tiber. The villa is most well known for its frescoes, including those by Raphael.

Following our visit, we returned to the hotel, grabbed our luggage, and departed for Civitavecchia around 1:00pm. It’s a little over an hour from Rome go the port and costs about 150 euro (for a mini van sized transport; it’s a bit cheaper if you just need a sedan).

Our cruise is aboard MSC Seaview, which is an entirely new cruise line and ship for us.

First impression: all seemed fine, though a bit “unorthodox,” to us. The boarding process was efficient yet “quirky. ” What do I mean? It’s difficult to say exactly (as the ship is nice and new, the crew friendly, etc.), but MSC is just a “bit different” as a European/Italian cruise line compared to what we’re used to from their American competitors. For instance, children (with permission) are allowed to check themselves out of the kids’ club at a much younger age. Likewise, food selections and eating venue times seem to appeal more to European tastes. Drinks too are handled in a more European way (i.e., you’re more likely to be paying for coffee and water in dining venues).

One of the stranger aspects of this MSC cruise (which seems to be a feature of many of them) is that you can start/end your cruise from numerous ports. So, we started in Rome. But other folks will come and go in other ports, including Cannes, Barcelona, etc.

We’d only experienced something like this once before in Alaska, which could either be a 14 day round-trip or a 7 day northbound or southbound journey (as it was for us). This just makes for a different vibe on a cruise, as there’s no clear beginning or end as a collective.

We had dinner in the Main Dining Room on the first night. The food and service were fine to good: nothing especially memorable (good or bad).

Since MSC matched our elite status with other cruise lines, we’ve moved to their top-tier loyalty level (Black Card) immediately. This gave us a welcome aboard bottle of sparkling wine and chocolate-covered strawberries.

Our balcony cabin (#12104) is nice and new with some thoughtful touches, though I’d like more contrast between the furniture and the carpet and a bit more storage space.

Arguably the best part of this cruise is the itinerary, which features a port of call on every single day. That’s highly unusual and very efficient in terms of using vacation time for sightseeing well. Of course, it also means no real downtime either, which might be as much of a “bug” as a “feature” at the moment for me.

The view is worth the effort:

You’re not allowed to take photos inside the Borghese. However, I couldn’t help myself from taking a couple of surreptitious snaps to remind me of a special exhibition they had on that interspersed the works of Lucio Fontana with their permanent collection.

This gives something of sense:

The exhibition really appealed to me for two reasons. First, I’ve always like the juxtaposition of modern / minimalist / contemporary art in traditional settings and vice versa. Second, I’m an admirer of Fontana (who’s “slashed” canvases are most familiar to me) — thus it was great to see a wider range of his oeuvre.

After the Borghese, we decided to stroll along Ancient Rome, which meant heading for the Coliseum with stops at a couple of churches along the way.

First, more Bernini at Santa Marie della Vitoria…

Next, a visit to the Basilica Papale Santa Maria Maggiore…

Then to the Coliseum…

A walk along the Forum…

And, a view of the Capitoline Museum.

I then found a little place for a late lunch a few blocks from the Piazza Navona, which had delicious pizza and pasta.

After lunch, we headed back to the hotel as I had a few late afternoon conference calls to take and emails to write for work, which is something I try to avoid when traveling but haven’t been able to on this trip.

For dinner (which starts between 7:00 and 8:00 at most restaurants in Rome), we went to a Japanese sushi and noodle place that was excellent (when I’m Rome, I guess?!?).

My sushi:

After this, we went to the local pastry shop for some cannoli and other delights.

The Vatican Museum’s collection was spectacular as usual, but it was remarkably crowded (always a buzz kill), especially on the march to the Sistine Chapel (which I’ve always felt is a bit over-rated anyway, if I’m honest). Mercifully, we’d booked tickets in advance so at least we didn’t have to wait to get into the museum.

Meh.

To me the highlights of the Vatican Museum were the delightfully affordable and delish lunch at an outdoor yet covered cafe, as well as the pleasure of getting up close to works located off of the main tourist paths, such as this evocative bust of a man:

After the museum, we contemplated visiting St. Peter’s Basilica. Then we saw the entrance line, which was snaking around the square in the rain. So, we quickly re-contemplated and moved on having “been there and done that” already.

We moved on to Castel Sant’Angelo, which was built originally as the Roman Emperor Hadrian’s mausoleum.

Here’s a photo of the exterior (taken on a different, drier day) taken a bit later in the week:

It was an interesting place to visit although there’s not a tremendous amount of art or artifacts inside. The architecture (having been added to and modified over the years) was fascinating, and the views from the building were spectacular:

For dinner, we went to The Bulldog (a Dutch place with an outpost in Rome) for some non-Italian grub. After this we went to the local pastry shop, which we’d also visited for breakfast too.

We hit the major “walking tour” highlights: Piazza de Popolo, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Pizza Navona, etc., as well as a handful of (mostly minor) churches along the way.

We grabbed lunch at a little place off a side street. It wasn’t “amazing” as Italian good goes, but it was reasonably priced and everyone liked it.

We returned to the hotel in the late afternoon and then ventured out again for dinner to a local place near our hotel.

Libby’s meal took first prize there: gnocchi in a sort of boar bolognese sauce. It was magnificent.

I tried a pasta dish with a vincisgrassi sauce, which is béchamel-like and comes from the Marche region (where it’s typically made into a sort of lasagna dish):

It was good but not spectacular — nonetheless worth the try (as I’d never even heard of it before!).

A couple of blocks away, we visited the local pastry shop to sample some of their sweet treats (all excellent) and get a couple of espresso (kind of “meh” for Italy).

All in all, a good first day…

This was our first time on Alitalia. Our coach seats were kind of cramped for space and the food was sub-par… you’d think an Italian airline could produce a credible pasta dish in coach (Delta does!). But, I digress.

We arrived in Miami around 5pm, and I drove home from there… despite the late hour on the body clock. Actually, I felt surprisingly good, and Mom kept me company. Libby and Emerson did what I expected — slept more than half the way home.

P.S. For those of you following along at home, I only posted the last days of this trip in June… while en route to London. What can I say? Better late than never.

With that as background, we started the morning visiting a couple of churches on our way to the Roman Coliseum and Forum. Of these, Santa Maria della Vittoria was especially enjoyable given that it contains Bernini’s swoon-worthy Ecstasy of St. Theresa (with more time a visit to the Villa Borghese would have been a good choice too). As for the more ancient sites in Rome, what can I say? As a former President of the high school Latin club, I always have a “pinch me it’s the Coliseum” kind of feeling.

In the late afternoon, we arranged for a taxi to take us out to Fiumicino. It’s a very small fishing village on the coast. Unfortunately, it doesn’t cater too much to non-Italian tourists. As a result, dining establishments didn’t open until 7 or 8pm… not optimal for an American pre-schooler. But, rather fortunately, a nice man (who spoke little English) at the Ristorante Capogrossi took pity on us, opened the restaurant over an hour early, and served us a wonderful tasting menu, as well as a simple pasta dish for Emerson. Awesome!

Fortunately, Emerson woke up feeling fine and without an further symptoms. We grabbed a quick breakfast of Scottish food (pancakes at McDonalds) for Emerson and espressos for us. We then set about walking across Rome for our planned visit to the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Vatican Museum clearly houses one of the world’s greatest collections of art. It’s not exactly my cup of tea (too religious; though I love seeing Raphael’s School of Athens)… and it’s usually horribly crowded (as it was today). But, Libby loves it, and I think Mom and Emerson had a good time on their first visit. Honestly, it’s amazing how accommodating Emerson is when it comes to museum visits. We easily spent a few hours looking at art, and she remained cheerful throughout.

Before leaving the museum, we had lunch in the Pope’s cafeteria. We then headed over to St. Peter’s, which really is unbelievably massive (a thought I’ve been struck with every time I’ve visited it). The crowds were light this afternoon (no waiting), and we had a pleasant visit . Since the weather was nice, we walked back across Rome to our hotel.

We ate dinner just down the street from our hotel at a wood-fired pizza and pasta place. The food was very good, as food in Rome nearly always is. Mom and I also enjoyed some Sicilian wine.