Cruise - Day 1

Did you know that Europe observes daylight savings?  Apparently they do.  The last weekend in March as a matter of fact.  This would have been good to know before we left.

Today we are headed to the Civitavecchia Port which is about an hour away from Rome.  The cruise leaves the port at 5pm and all passengers must be on board 90 minutes prior.  We didn’t schedule any sightseeing today so our only tasks were to pack and get out the door.  Shortly after we woke up Mike looked at his phone and said “it is 10:15am”.  It sure didn’t feel like 10:15am.  I was surprised we had slept so late.  I checked my watch and it said 9:15am.  I looked at the clock in the flat and it said 9:15am.  So we figured Mike’s Blackberry was having a hard time.  The Bureau doesn’t allow automatic updates on his phone so when he changes time zones it doesn’t automatically update.  He has to do it manually so he changed it to show the same time as my watch and the clock.  We took a few photos of the flat before we left.

The front of our building.  Graffiti here does not indicate a bad neighborhood...just looks bad.

We managed to get out the door with relative ease and took the metro to the train station.  It wasn’t quite noon and the next train was at 2:10pm with a scheduled arrival of 2:51pm.  Mike was a little concerned about being able to get to the ship in 40 min but surprisingly I wasn’t.  I am embracing the “fly by the seat of my pants approach” this trip.  The kids found a McDonalds and we agreed to grab lunch there.  Having only killed about 20 minutes of our 2 hour wait, we found a spot to wait.  Sam and I read while Jason played with his new Gladiator cards.  Mike just stood and stared at the train schedule board.  He noticed that the time on the board looked to be a whole hour later.  If that was correct, it was 1:49pm and not 12:49pm like we thought.  We ran to track 23 and boarded the train.   Once settled on board we used Mike’s Blackberry to Google Daylight Savings in Europe.  Wow! We were lucky that Mike caught that.  We would have missed our train and then the cruise if we would have followed my watch.

We were on the express train so the first stop was going to be ours.  Jason played with the Gladiator cards that came with his book and Samantha wrote in her journal.  The 40 minute ride went quickly.  The three adults sitting across from us on the train were also taking the same cruise so we shared a taxi for the short ride from the train station to the pier.

The check in went easily although I was a little hesitant to turn over our passports to be held by the cruise line.  Apparently when we dock, customs agents may come onboard and ask to see passports.  Because it is usually very early they found it was easier to have them readily available than to have to call cruisers out of their staterooms.  Reluctantly I turned over our passports.  After we checked in, they took our baggage right away then we boarded.  Just inside, the kids were each given a wristband to wear during the duration of the cruise which showed our muster location.  If there is an emergency and we are separated, we are to go directly there and the staff will get the kids there.

When I originally called to get information on this cruise, I was told that a family suite required a minimum of 5 people so I was going to book two staterooms instead.  However, when I finally did call to make the reservation, it was so close to the cruise date that a family suite had been released into general inventory and I was able to book it with only four.  Waiting also allowed us to get a fantastic price.  I was concerned about not having a balcony but when I walked into our suite I was thrilled.  At the very front of the ship, we have four separate sections each with a large round window.  We are two for two on perfect lodging accommodations.



They took turns sleeping on the top bunk.

The view from our room.

We had just enough time to drop off our carry-ons and clean up before we were called down for a muster drill.  After that we spent quite a bit of time trying to get signed up for shore excursions and trying to change our dining time from 7:15pm to 6:30pm.  We also went and signed the kids up for the kids program.

Dinner was fantastic.  Jason and Mike had prime rib, Samantha had and I had fish.  It is going to be tough going to back to DFAC food.