Woke at 9:30 am to finish packing and drive to Steph’s parents’ house where we were leaving our cars. My parents picked us up at my in-laws at around 2:30 pm so we could get to Newark Airport [which is about an hour away] two hours before our 5:25 pm flight. The trip there was uneventful, as were check-in and going through security. The line at check-in was excruciatingly long, though; glad we got there early. We waited in the terminal for a bit and then boarded the plane. For the record, Alitalia’s food is not nearly as good as Virgin Atlantic’s. I slept a couple of hours during the flight, but for the most part stayed awake reading.
We arrived in Italy at 7:30 am the next morning [1:30 am NJ time]. After deplaning, we found the cruise line representative, waited around for the other passengers, then got on a bus to take a tour of the Vatican. And boy was it the wrong tour for us to take. 5 hours of walking around in the heat, listening to the [very knowledgeable] tour guide talk about all the art and architecture in the Vatican Museum. We could have been on an air-conditioned tour bus seeing all the touristy places in Rome. I was very unimpressed with the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s also got an “eh” from me. On the whole, I did not enjoy the tour.
Sweaty and tired, we finally boarded the bus that would take us on our hour long ride to the ship. Steph fell asleep [as she would do on every bus ride we took for the entire 12 days], but I stayed awake and enjoyed the countryside. We checked in at the ship, got our keys, and went to our cabin. Fortunately, all of our luggage had made the trip and was happily waiting for us when we got there. Other passengers were not so lucky. After getting situated, we went up to the dining room for dinner. We had the late seating, so this was at around 8:45 pm local [2:45 pm NJ]. I was a bit nervous about this because, unless your party has exactly the same number of people as there are chairs at the table, they seat you with random people. Thankfully, the couple that we sat with didn’t suck. Dave and Stephanie, of Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, were also married on July 1 and on their honeymoon. They turned out to be great dinner companions.
With all of the day’s required activities at an end, we were finally able to retire to our cabin and get some sleep. All told I had been up for 30 hours straight, with only an hour or two of sleep. I crashed hard….
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