October 27 - Wednesday - Rome

Breakfast comes with our room at the Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi. I'm sure we paid a pretty penny for it, but we don't know how much because we bought a package deal from Holland America.

Breakfast was delicious, though - the best meal of every day we were there. We usually had eggs, bacon, and bread, and then topped it off with fresh fruit (the pineapple was sliced wonderfully thin) and pastries.

Yummy, yummy, yummy in the tummy, tummy, tummy

To get to the breakfast place, you go through the lobby and then two huge deluxe sitting areas and a breakfast room entry room kind of affair, check in with the lady in the suit behind the podium, and then enter a very large breakfast room set with round tables covered with two white tablecloths. (Look straight back in the picture. The breakfast room is the farthest away.)

Breakfast room is the last room back, preceded by two large sitting areas and two smaller dining rooms

In the center of the room is a buffet with cold cereals poured out into bowls, scrambled eggs, bacon and sausage, cold cuts, fruit, pies and cakes, and other things. Another smaller table, off to the side, has quiche and a few other things.

Wait staff is everywhere, dressed in their costumes, but they seem nearly oblivious to the fact that people are coming in and going out. On Monday, Lauren had to get someone's attention to ask for coffee.

We ate a good healthy breakfast, large enough to hold us until mid-afternoon, we hoped, but not too large to want to do physical activity. With no restaurants around here and with street vendors selling mostly junk food and very uninteresting folded over pizzas, we wanted wanted to be prepared to last a while.

It's all very beautiful in this hotel and it looks luxurious, but the service is anything but that. It's certainly not the American hospitality we're used to.

We found the same kind of oblivious behavior when we checked in. There was a doorman, but he doesn't do any door things. We hauled our own heavy luggage up into the lobby from our shuttle from the ship, were greeted in a rush of words from our HAL representative, who's consigned to a small table near the door of the luxurious lobby, went to the desk to check in, and finally a bell hop or porter came for our luggage and showed us to our room.

As we pass in and out of the hotel, the men behind the massive front desk are chatting away with each other or are staring at walls. We tourists, who provide the means for them to have a job, are invisible. I thought it was all very strange.

But nonetheless, this trip is about exploration. It's why we travel. We can't be distracted by inferior service or the perception of slights.

Sunday, we walked from our hotel to the Spanish Steps. Monday, we took a HOHO tour bus and toured St. Peter's Basilica. Tuesday, we charted our own path and walked from our hotel, across the beautiful Villa Borghese, to the Tiber. Today, we hopped bus 52 to Via Veneto and did another HOHO tour, a different one this time. Today was a beautiful day - our pictures reflect the clear blue skies.

We saw much the same things we saw on our Monday HOHO tour, with one big exception. Today, the Pope was out an blessed a certain group of people who had signed up for his appearance. I think this is a regular Wednesday thing.

The Pope

We had our late lunch at the Hard Rock on Via Veneto - a big cheeseburger (half each) and a vegetable salad. Yummy.

We walked around a while on Via Veneto and explored a couple side streets (ah, not nearly so nice as Via Veneto!), then we took bus 52 back to hotel, packed, checked last minute details, tried to check in online (American Airlines) but failed (I don't think you can do it from a foreign location ...).

Day's over! Rome's over! Now that we've been here and bungled around on our own, Rome is no longer an intimidating stranger to us. We might consider coming back again ... at least to Italy. It's a pretty nice place.

Our flickr pictures of Rome are posted at: Rome

October 26 - Tuesday - Rome

After breakfast, we set out to walk the central to north end of Villa Borghese to the Tiber. The weather today was still moderately cool and rainy, but definitely doable. I used Google Maps to chart a course, writing down each of our turns, and we were successful in getting to the Tiber and back.

It began to occur to me on this walk, after having walked and ridden the tour buses through Rome now for a couple of days, that Rome is about the beauty of what man can create. I don't know what my impression was before we came. At best, it was vague, perhaps draped in pasta and gladiators and statues. But my opinion now is different.

The park is beautiful, but it celebrates more than natural beauty. People can walk in peaceful surroundings ...

Walkers in Villa Borghese

They can sit beside quiet ponds and dream ...


Pond in Villa Borghese

They are surrounded by reminders of writers, poets, artists of ages past ...


Statue of Gogol

By graceful arches ...

Peering in to what seems to be a government building, near the Tiber

Magnificant buildings ...

I have a thought that while the best of man's artistry is brought together in St. Peter's, the sense that stirred that artistry is evident everywhere in Rome. Rome is a sensory experience.

We ate lunch at a little cafe on Flaminia. Only one person in the cafe spoke English, but he helped us figure out how to order. (Of course, if we spoke Italian, that would be helpful, too, but we Americans have become spoiled.)


Mouth full of good food

Our flickr pictures of Rome are posted at: Rome

October 25 - Monday - Rome

Having walked along the eastern boundary of the Villa Borghese yesterday, we thought we had enough courage today to catch the 910 bus to the Termini where we could catch a HOHO tour. Our HAL representative at the hotel, who seemed to weary at our novice Rome questions about how to do this and how to get somewhere, sold us two bus tickets from her own stash. It was easier than directing us to a newsstand where we could purchase them ourselves. We hadn't seen a newsstand anywhere near our place. Maybe they don't have those in the elite area where we were lodging. The problem is, you must have your ticket before you board the bus. Buses here are cashless and don't sell tickets.

Everything worked as planned, although we met a further challenge at the Termini when we were accosted by some young fellows (maybe mid 20s), one of whom pulled some brochures out of his bag, and they started promoting the Green Line bus. Both fellows had blue plastic badge-like affairs hanging from a string around their necks. The badge said they were official something or others who could sell HOHO bus tickets. That badge looked suspiciously like it could have been pulled out of a self-badge-making press just that morning. But then another couple guys came up, too, and they all had the same badge.

We gave in and bought the Green Line tickets - nothing ventured, nothing gained. As we made our way to the Green Line bus, we wondered if we had been scammed. We were amazed that we were able to board. They even gave us a receipt when we boarded, a receipt which we were to carry all day so we could hop on and hop off.

It was cool and rainy, but there was a break in the rain at that time, so we climbed to the top deck and rode around, taking pictures, listening to recorded commentary (sometimes before and sometimes after the site), spoken in a New York accent,  through green ear buds, and trying to take in as much as we could.

People everywhere, everywhere, everywhere. Cars and motorcycles everywhere, everywhere, everywhere.


The Termini



Cars, cars, cars

Rome, with a population of 2.7 million people, as an annual tourist destination for over 4 million people, has no parking. The thing is, explained our HAL representative, every time they started to dig for a parking structure, whether above or under ground, they came across evidence that there used to be a building there, or some pottery, or other archaeological possibilities, and the construction is halted immediately. Not only is Rome filled with visible history which surrounds these modern people, the possibility of invisible history has a choke hold on them.

Some of the things we saw on our HOHO trip ...


There are no plain buildings in Rome



The Colosseum, right in the middle of everything



Bell tower

The highlight of today's touring, though, had to be St. Peter's Basilica. It's the only place we got off the bus to have a look around. There were a number of people there, but I'm sure the lines were small compared to some days because we're at the tail end of tourist season.

St. Peter's Basilica

The line to St. Peter's was long but fast. There's no fee to visit, so there's no need to go through but one line. That helped, I'm sure. Immediately when we walked in, I was in awe of the place. The lighting is perfect for the immense space which holds some of what must be the most beautiful art work on the planet. The interior of the basilica is so large that the gigantic statuary looks small. Color is everywhere, but it's subdued. We saw the Pieta, but I didn't take a picture of it, preferring to remember its perfect glow only in my mind.

Wikipedia has some good history and photos that do far better than I could do, but we did take a few photos just to remember a few details that were meaningful to us.


Inside St. Peter's

We're not Catholic, so there was much religious symbology that was lost on us. What impressed us was the sheer perfection of the art, the lighting, and the colors. Amazing!

Our flickr pictures of Rome are posted at: Rome

October 25 - Monday - Interlude

We're in Rome now, and I'm a couple days behind organizing our pictures and posting our blog. But I want to capture a few things for the record before I forget them - things not necessarily reflected in our photos.

We're at the Hotel Grand Parco Dei Principi in Rome, located in the northeast corner of the Ville Borghese. According to the best I can figure out from our guidebooks, this is an area that's considered to be North Rome, a little off the beaten tourist track. None of the guidebooks actually show the northern end of the Ville Borghese, it's so uninteresting to tourists.

The Hotel Grand Parco is a 5-star hotel. Europe rates all its hotels with stars, much like you might see in an AAA tour book. Unlike the AAA tour books, however, this rating is official. A hotel must meet certain standards to receive each level of ratings. Five stars is the best. This is a hotel Holland America uses, among a few others, for their travelers.

We've never been to Rome, so the various districts and distances between them were meaningless to us. We are definitely novice travelers in this city.

As it turns out, this area seems to be embassy row. Our little room (beautifully furnished, fabric on the walls, heavy wooden doors, very quiet, very clean, and, I have to emphasize, very small, is on the first floor - that means it's actually on the second floor, but Europe seems to start with zero for ground level (we've seen that often as we've traveled here), and then move up consecutively from there. (Think of ages in certain Asian countries. When you're born, you're "one," because this is your first year of life, and so forth.)

We have a very small private terrace with our room, not as large as most closets, and it looks out over the back of the Austrian embassy. Not too far away from us is the Saudi Arabian embassy.

This hotel outclasses us by far. Although we appreciate the finer things of life, we rarely indulge in them. A fine dinner served by a wait staff is probably wasted on us. We like good food, but we normally eat family style, sitting around the table and chatting, getting up to get whatever we forgot to put out for the meal. We appreciate beautiful, well-made clothing, but well-made and functional is usually our standard. Getting dressed up, for us, means putting on something that's clean and not wrinkled, that fits us reasonably well, and is appropriate for the occasion.

So we are outclassed here (but safe and comfortable - something we prize highly). To order a late night ham and cheese sandwich would add 22 Euros to our bill. To order a soft drink would add another 5 Euros. We are paying slightly more than 30 Euros for a 24-hour period of wireless internet  - pricy, but if we're going to spend what we believe is big bucks, this is a better choice than 30 Euros for a ham sandwich and a soft drink.

So, Europe is not cheap, and Rome is no exception. That's not news to us. One of the fun things about traveling, for us, is to travel our style - clean, safe, and comfortable, with fairly nutritious food that doesn't make us sick, and to stay within our sense of not being extravagant. We want to come home with dollars in our pocket and to be able to look forward to the next trip on our agenda.

Things I want to remember to record in  a subsequent post:

• The number of countries represented by our fellow passengers on our HAL cruise - many
• The Captain's Log summary of the number of miles we traveled each day on the ship, including the hour we docked and left port at each place and the gps coordinates
• Some pictures and data of the dates missing in our blog, the days we were at sea

Now that we have high speed internet, I'm catching up on posting blog pictures. It may be until we get home that I post our complete flickr albums. We don't want to waste our time here using the internet. It just so happens that it's now 5:30 in the morning (I was up at 4:30), and I'm biding my time until Lauren gets up in a few hours, and this is one of the ways I can use my time without disturbing him too much. I am sitting in the hallway of our room, by the light of the bathroom, on a pillow, and typing away. Lauren is a light sleeper and borders on insomnia; I am a deep sleeper and an early riser (very early). We have learned to compromise over the years of our togetherness - or perhaps a better way to say this is that we have learned to be considerate of the other's needs while keeping our own needs and habits satisfied.

Last night, after walking for more than 5 hours trying to figure out just where we are in Rome, when I was more exhausted than I can remember being for a long time, I rested and then uploaded some missing pictures in our blog, rested and uploaded some more, and finally figured it was ok to give it up about 9:15 and fall into a deep sleep. I posted pictures through Trabzon, Turkey last night. This morning, I will make a little more progress.

Walking 5 hours? Before we left home, I created a map and directions from Google maps to get us from our hotel to the nearest McDonalds, which happens to be close to the Spanish Steps. That was our challenge yesterday - to follow that map without getting lost. We ended up in what seemed to be an endless underground walkway - at least a mile or so of it - nothing like that in the directions I had, but we achieved it. It took us 2 hours to get there. We walked around a while, and then we found a little shorter way home, but not shorter by much, walking only a short distance through the underground and then trapsing the length of the Borghese to find our hotel. Lauren and I both have fresh colds (they were going around during our last days on the ship), and I'm sure that added to my exhaustion, but we did it, and we now have a sense of Rome that we wouldn't have otherwise had.

This is how tired I was: When we got home, I took off my socks, lay down and fell into a sleep for a short while. When I fuzzily woke up, I decided to put on my socks. I put on one, and then couldn't find the other. We looked for it and looked for it and looked for it, even digging through all of our suitcases. This is a small room - come on! I finally decided to take off the one sock I'd found and put on a new pair. As I took off that one sock, I found that I had put two socks on one foot.

Today, we'll be off to find HOHO (hop-on hop-off) bus 110 by taking city bus 910 to the Termini, and hopefully we'll see some of the more popular Rome sights.

October 24 - Sunday - Summary and Captain's Log

This is a summary of information about our cruise. This first tidbit came from one of our daily newsletters. People on this cruise came from:

Australia - 34
Austria - 3
Belgium - 11
Canada - 161
Denmark - 3
Finland - 1
Germany - 13
Republic of Ireland - 5
Israel - 5
Italy - 4
Luxembourg - 2
Mexico - 4
The Netherlands - 45
New Zealand - 10
Norway - 2
Panama - 2
Peru - 1
Romania - 6
South Africa - 7
Spain - 4
Sweden - 2
United Kingdom - 32
United States - 427

If I entered those numbers correctly, they should add to 787 people, although the captain's log says we had 785 guests. Perhaps the two from Sweden or Panama or Luxemborg didn't show, or maybe two got off the ship at a port after the initial count and before we reached rome - or perhaps the Captain's log rounded down to the nearest 5.

According to the Captain's Log, there were 452 crew personnel supporting the ship, including the captain and the sailing crew, administrative personnel, culinary staff, entertainment staff, cabin stewards, and whoever it takes to make sailing this ship a pleasant experience for the passengers.

From the Captain's Log, we learn that we sailed 3,048 nautical miles. Our top speed was 17.1 when we sailed from Monemvasia to Rome, and our lowest speed was 8.1 when we sailed from Batumi to Trabzon (a short distance). One nautical mile equals 1.15 statute miles or 1.85 kilometers.

We consumed an average of 16,000 gallons of fuel per day.

October 24 - Sunday - Arrive in Rome

Sleeping is not one of my better talents. It's true, I sleep deeply, but I generally sleep short. I woke up about 3:00 in the morning, took my pillow and a deck blanket and went out to the verandah. It was a beautiful early morning, the weather cool but the air and skies clear, and I was soon back to sleep. Sometime around 5:30 or 6:00, while it was still quite dark, I woke with a start as a boat speeded up to our ship. It was the pilot for the port at Civitavecchia, the port for Rome. I was awake from then on. I can't resist.

Soon I was rewarded with this view


Welcome to Rome (Civitavecchia Port)

I thought I could spy the cruise ship terminal in the distance, but I was wrong. What I saw was the ferry boat terminal. I watched in amazement as we backed and forwarded into our dock and at almost the same time this huge ferry comes in and backs up into the dock where I thought we would be.

Ferry backing into dock

I could see the men in the open area of the stern going up and down ladders and doing whatever they do before docking - I watched carefully because there were a few moments when I wondered if the ferry was going to crash into us. But no, in no time the ferry was neatly tucked away.

"Parking" score: 10+++

After we disembarked at 9:15, we boarded an hour's bus ride to the hotel. The first time in a new city is a neck craning event as we look this way and that and try to take in our new surroundings as quickly as possible. It's always fun to see what the streets are like, who's out, and generally take in the environment. This time, it's a Sunday morning, and most things are quiet.


Sunday morning in Rome

We knew we were staying at the Grand Hotel Parco dei Principi, and we knew it was on the northeast tip of the Villa Borghese (park), so we tried to watch the streets to see if we could recognize anything we expected to see. We didn't recognize a thing until we came to this more heavily wooded area and correctly guessed that it was the park. The driver dumped us off and we were here.

In strongly Italian-accented English, our HAL representative gave us a few short instructions about when breakfast was each day and the time we would need to be ready to leave on Thursday morning ... and, of course, it was all too much and we remembered only sketches of what she said. The best thing that happened was that I asked her for a second map for us because we both like to have maps, and she gave me a much better one than was in our little "welcome" kit. We've used that map consistently.

Amazingly, our room was ready for us. Our fellow passengers weren't so fortunate. We got our luggage up here, did a few necessary things, and out the door we were. I had Google directions to McDonalds, near the Spanish Steps, from my research at home, and we followed those.

What a confusing day, but confusion means that we're on our way to becoming unconfused. See more about our first day here in my "Interlude" post ...

The one thing I took a picture of, though, on our foray into the more southern depths of our section of Rome, was the Spanish Steps ...


Spanish Steps (Spagna)

That was an accomplishment for me!

(I had previously worried about doing 3-walker HAL tours, and was very surprised that I was more than able to do those. By comparison, this was a 5 to 6-walker tour. I've met my limit.)

October 23 - Saturday - At Sea

Today is the third (and last) day on this voyage that we'll be at sea with no port of call. I haven't created a blog for the other two days, but this one is interesting because we'll be going through the Strait of Messina and then seeing Stromboli, an active volcano.

We started the day with a beautiful sunrise ...


Sunrise at sea

As we neared the Strait, a ferry was kind enough to cross in front of us, giving us a first-hand look at the way people currently cross from one side of the Strait to the other, from Sicilia to Calabria and back again. 

Ferry crossing Strait of Messina

A bridge has been in the planning for a long time (since Roman times, perhaps? See this Wikipedia article for some good reading), but it hasn't happened yet. The cost grows even more prohibitive as time goes on. Frank, our official shipboard historian and travel commentator, and he gave us a very good blow by blow as we passed through.

As we passed through the Strait, we were treated, as promised, with our first view of Stromboli.

Strombloli - With villages on either side of it

The amazing thing about this actively volcanic mountain is that there are villages on either side of it and a few isolated dwellings (I counted 5) scattered in between. If the picture were a closeup of the base facing us, we would see those 5 dwellings. There is no transportation but by boat. The last eruption was in 2009 (see the Wikipedia article above), and people still come and live here. Frank said this is a resort for the very wealthy.

Village at base of Stromboli

What a fascinating hour or so that was. The captain took us slowly past the west side of it, close, and held us steady at the eruption side (northwest) for quite a while.


First view of the collapsed (active) area of Stromboli

As though on cue, the mountain spewed out a nice burp as we reached the north side ,,,


Stromboli spewing smoke and lava

And we were able to see lava flow down and spash into the sea.


Lava steaming in the sea

Frank said that the lava glows red (as it would) at night. What a sight that must be.

The tiny, by comparison, stub of the original volcano lies northeast of the currently active mountain.

Stub of original volcano (there's a lighthouse on it)

It was an interesting day at sea!

Our flickr photos for this page: Strait of Messina