"Rome Rome it is strange ..."

... to the tune of "Home Home on the range" ... everybody sing ...

Rome is actually pretty strange ... there is "modern Rome" which is very much like you might expect any city of 3 million people to be ... busy, bustling, loud, full of traffic and people in a hurry.

And then there is "Ancient Rome" which is in fact surrounded by "modern Rome". Literally next to a temple or "house" or whatever constructed hundreds of years before Christ walked the earth will be a city street with stores selling everything from souvineres to wireless computer equipment. It's really very odd.

We left for the tour bus about 9:30AM ... hopped the bus to the Coliseum got off and started our marathon day of site seeing. To get as much as possible out of the day we decided to spend the euros and hook up with one of the "private" guided tours ,,, our private group of about 30 souls each paid 20 euros for an English speaking guide ... in this case "Roberto" who really did an excellent job of marching us through the Coliseum, explaining the finer points and some funny stories ... we finished that tour at noon where we were handed off to "Elayne" ... a young Canadian girl with a masters in art history ... she led the 26 or so of us that wanted to get our euro's worth up the Palentine Hill which was where Rome was founded a long damn time ago and guided us through the "palace" on the top of the Palantine. Really a very good tour and well worth the 20 euros.

From Eastern Mediterranean 2008

From Eastern Mediterranean 2008

One thing we learned was that these "private tours" are basically a cottage industry started a few years ago ... these folks contract with the executors of the big attractions like the Vatican, the Coliseum and so on for the right to lead tours with "special privileges" which really means you get to line jump ahead of the people paying somewhat less and you get a "guide" vs reading the signage or renting headphones to listen to recorded descriptions. I love capitalism!!

After the Palentine we walked through the Roman Forum (skipping lunch) and then on to the Pantheon. We covered lottsa ground and just barely caught the 4:30pm bus back to our starting point to crash before a splendid dinner at a small "mom and pop" restaurant Mom was about 75 and Pop was around 80 ... a fun dining experience. We topped off the day with gellato on the street ...



Tomorrow we head to the port and board the Grand Princess for 12 more days of adventure.

I posted several(but only a few relative to the numbers we took) photos in the gallery ... just click on the blog link and the gallery is a link on the left ... or click here Link to gallery

Rome wasn't seen in a day ... but we will do our best!!!

Hello from the Eternal City! First I gotta say it's a long travel day
from Bulverde, Texas to Rome Italy ... but we knew it would be.
Second the Rome security and customs is WAY faster than Vancouver ...
but how can it be slower?

Other than long and a bit cramped for the 8+ hour flight from Newark the
travel went very smooth We arrived at our hotel about 9:45am Saturday
and our travel companions showed up about 10:45am all went as planned.

We hopped on a bus and rode down to the Vatican

From Eastern Mediterranean 2008

sadly learning we were too late to get into the Sistine Chapel
(well unless we wanted to pay $50 each for a "semi-private group of 25
tour...) we decided to see the Basilica on our own ... WOW!!!

From Eastern Mediterranean 2008

The whole thing is breathtaking and I can't begin to describe the sheer
SIZE of the place ...

We will fill in more details later ... kinda late Saturday night and
still no sleep ... we did go to the Trevi Fountain ...

From Eastern Mediterranean 2008

Words fail me at this late hour ... had a nice dinner in a small
bistro ...

Full blown site seeing tomorrow after much needed SLEEP ,,,,

"All my bags are packed I'm ready to go ..." ... well MOSTLY packed anyway ...

It is almost time for our odyssey to begin!  Carolyn and I have both packed our main bags (she has 2 to make the 50 pound limit I managed to make it in 1 with a few pounds to spare).  We will leave our final carry on packing until tomorrow .

Our plane leaves Friday morning at 6:45AM -- YIKES!! -- that means we will need to be at the airport around 4:30AM which puts our departure from casa de Millsap at 4AMish ... you can then figure what time we need to set the alarm for ... YIKES again!!

The flight to  Newark will take about 3.5 hours putting us in Newark around 11:30AM Eastern.  The good news is we should have PLENTY of time to catch the flight to Rome ... it departs Newark at 5:30PM and a mere 8 hours and 20 minutes later we will be in Rome Italy at 7:50AM Saturday morning. -- YIKES --

Once we get thru customs in Rome (and we can only HOPE we don't have a repeat of the "fighting old farts" Vancouver incident!) we will seek out our shuttle transfer to the hotel where we will hopefully meet up with our friends Woodie, Linda, Paul and Jeanne.  They should have gotten to Rome from Germany today ... hope they made it!!

Once we hook up in Rome and get settled in the hotel we have a full day of site seeing planned Saturday.  Top of that agenda is the Vatican and associated spots like the Sistine Chapel -- DOUBLE YIKES!! never figured I'd actually get to see something like that in person! -- 

After a full day of site seeing stacked on top of basically 24 hours of travel ... we hope to get some much needed sleep and then Sunday see the sites around our hotel that will include the famous Roman Coliseum, the Trevi Fountain at night, and several other famous Roman hot spots.

Monday morning we will take a shuttle from the hotel to the pier in Civitavecchia a port city about 80km from Rome.  We will board the Grand Princess for 12 days of what we fully expect to be astounding adventure and wonder.  The weather so far is projected to be very tolerable and we have our collective fingers crossed.

Oh ... and of course Thursday night (tomorrow) we have to attend the Ranger football game ... they are playing for the district championship!  That will get us home about 10PM ... gotta get up around 3:30AM --- YIKES!!!!! ---

Only a couple of weeks away!!!

Man time flies when you are hemorrhaging money! (I hate the stock market, the bond market, and the supermarket these days!) Oh well ... we can pretend we have the money to make the trip!

Actually we are REALLY glad we got the trip paid for (for the most part) when we did because we are committed to go this way and with the way the economy is going we might have otherwise missed out on a trip we likely will never have the chance to take again ... so ... all smiles ... off we will go!!

As we did in our Alaska travel log we will try very hard to make daily entries here and we LOVE to read comments so please do let us know what you think or questions about what we have seen.

If you scroll down in this log you will see some of the highlights of where we expect to go and what our actual itinerary is. As posted we will fly out of San Antonio VERY EARLY on November 7 ... have a lengthy (like 6+ hrs) layover in Newark and then wing it across the pond to Rome landing there around 7:45AM on November 8.

I have arranged thru our hotel in Rome to have a "driver" pick us up at the airport and take us to the hotel ... we COULD have taken the train since the hotel is only a couple of blocks from the main train station in Rome but to tell the truth after my long ago experience with a cab driver in London that didn't understand my "Texan" I'm pretty sure getting on the correct train heading the correct direction and getting off at the right place and then getting directions to the hotel and walking there in Rome ... where not only do they not understand "Texan" but for the most part "English" ... I'm pretty sure that plan would be doomed to failure.

Our hotel is the Orlanda in Rome the link follows

Link to Hotel Info

This is NOT a 5 star hotel ... but it's close to the center of Rome (like the Coliseum) and other tourist type spots we want to see during our 2 day stay before sail away on November 10.

We will be touring the Vatican on our first day (Saturday) there and a couple of other such spots and then on the 9th will toodle around the major "must sees" downtown.

There are six of us traveling together ... we will meet up with our friends Woodie and Linda Meyer and their friends Paul and Jeanne Stone in Rome on the 8th. Those two couples left today (10/24/08) for Germany to visit and tour around that part of Europe before we hook up with them in Rome.

As posted in this web log earlier (scroll down) ... we have several exciting excursions all planned ... it's gonna be a blast!

We will post photo's either directly in the log or more likely in the Med Trip Gallery (there is a link to the gallery on the left side of the web log title page just under the subscription box) ... but ... internet access on the ship is both incredibly slow and excruciatingly expensive ... so it's likely that the majority of our photos will be posted after our return to home ground.

Ok ... enough for now .... thanks for reading and remember we love to read your comments as we boogie along ...

Bade

A small map of the itinerary ...

This is a small map of our itinerary ... looks like a nice trip

We have a cabin assignment!!!

When we booked this cruise we decided to save some money and book what is called a "cabin guarantee" ... which in essence means ... Princess doesn't know the cabin number you will be assigned at booking BUT you are guaranteed the class of cabin you are paying for "or better" ... it's that "or better" that we were hoping for when we booked the "cheapest" class of balcony cabin on the ship ... referred to as "BF" category ... well we just got our cabin assignment .. Lido deck cabin #L219 ... which is a "BA" category cabin .. the top of the line balcony class cabin ... so we got essentially a $500/per person cabin upgrade by taking a chance on the "cabin guarantee" ... IF (unlikely) they decide to upgrade us again ... it would be to a mini-suite ... which is what we had on our previous Caribbean cruise on the Grand and what we have on the Alaska cruise ... they are very nice ... but kinda spendy and we are TRYING to do this cruise on a bit of a budget due to the horrendous airfare costs ...

Ahhhhhhhh ... to be UPGRADED .... it's all good ...

Airline tickets secured ... OUCH!

Well I went ahead and bit the bullet and bought the roundtrip airline tickets for this trip ... we decided that buying them now vs waiting and hoping airfares would decrease closer to the actual trip was probably foolish in this time of astronomical fuel prices ... hope we didn't screw that up!

A few things about airfare prices nowdays ...

• #1 ... they ain't cheap
• #2 ... Using American Airline frequent flyer miles is apparently virtually impossible now. I had HOPED I could get at least one roundtrip ticket with 40k-50k airmiles ... not so much ... in fact ... unless I was willing to go 100k airmiles (which is way more than I have) ... I could not get a flight that accommodated or even almost accommodated our travel dates ... I am beginning to suspect that they ask for your travel dates and then specifically block those out of available frequent flyer mile seats. It's odd though because I was able to book two round trip first class tickects to Vancouver for the Alaska trip with out any hassle.
• #3 ... Using American Airline frequent flyer miles to UPGRADE a purchased ticket is also a joke ... see a trend here? I thought I'd BUY the tickets and then upgrade to 1st class with miles ... no problem ... 50k miles per ticket .... NOT!!!!!!!!

We are flying Continental Airlines ... Leave San Antonio Friday November 7 and return Sunday November 23 .... we will overnight in Rome 11/8 and 11/9 to see some sights there before we depart on the ship and then we will overnight in Rome again 11/22 before the flight back home.