ROME: AN EYE OF THE CITY

The time of year October, the weather; high 70’s low to mid 80’s. What can I say? Rome is a beautiful city that reminds you of well New York City if you were to add millions of years of beautiful ruins. Rome is an historic city with the hustle and bustle of New York. During my rendezvous to Rome I made my way there by cruise ship. If you too are going by cruise you will arrive in Civitavecchia cruise port which is about an hour and a half from Rome. With this in mind you can charter a private vehicle (which can cost an ugly penny) or take the train (their version of Amtrak aka commuter train), and have unlimited access of their metro which costs $38.90pp through Cruising Rome. Side note if you do take the train I would definitely buy your ticket ahead of time. There was a long line of folks waiting to buy a ticket and we skipped the line because we already had reservations. My group chose the train access along with skip the line Vatican for $86.31pp and added on inside Coliseum tour option for $19.19 through Ticket Italy.

With the package that we chose it included private pick up from the cruise ship, (Norwegian Epic a beautiful ship), to the train station and return service. There was a bit of a hurdle on the day of, the driver did not show up with enough room for our entire group of 12, so the second group had to wait for another driver. In defense of them some participants didn’t sign up until during the cruise and the morning of so not sure of how smooth it would have went if it was all pre-planned. There was also confusion once we got to the train station again with the number of tickets because of the last minute purchases, but it all worked out.

Once you get your tickets you head to the train platform where you must timestamp your ticket before getting on the train. The trains run about every hour and it takes an hour and twenty minutes to get from Civitavecchia to Rome Termini Station. Please plan your timing right if you are on a cruise. You do not want to miss your train.

When we arrived at Rome Termini the station was just like the Amtrak station you would find in NYC. Their metro is in the same station, but you do have to walk a ways to get to it. The metro is the best way to get around the city unless you want to do the hop on and hop off bus. Because we were pressed for time we decided on the metro. The metro is super easy with only two lines the Blue and the Red line. A bit of history for you, Rome keeps trying to build out the metro system, but keep hitting artifacts that they need to preserve so they have to stop work when this happens. OK, back to the topic at hand. Once you are on the metro BEWARE this is definitely where pick-pockets lurk because of the busyness of the train. Again this is a city and this is a commuter train.

Metro Map - https://www.rome.info/metro/

My group ventured off to the Vatican first. With the package we purchased we first had to find the office to pick up our skip the line tickets. Trust me pre-purchase the skip the line for any sights that you can this will help with quicker access. While walking to find the office there are guides on the street that help you find your way. At first I ignored them thinking they were just trying to sell something, but once they know you have tickets they are very helpful in pointing you in the right direction.

After picking up our tickets we headed over to the Vatican. THIS PLACE IS HUGE. There is no way you are going through the whole thing in one day. My group decided to zoom through so we could make it to the Sistine Chapel. Even zooming through by following the signs and the amount of people it still took us well over an hour to get to the Chapel. The Chapel was also packed as we zipped through it. Again be careful in the Vatican/Chapel and group member was a victim of a pick-pocket while we explored. The Vatican is beautiful, but again you really need a whole or at least half a day to see it.

With our time running down we decided to head to the Coliseum next. We took a taxi from the Vatican because we were NOT walking clear across town. When we arrived at the Coliseum we proceeded to the ticket booth to redeem our inside the Coliseum tickets only to find out they assign times. OOOPS we did not know this. We were not going to make our assigned time because we would push it to make it back to the train to make it back to the ship and we were not getting left. Hindsight if we had of known we would have went there first and ended at the Vatican. Even though we were disappointed we took great pictures outside then made our way back to the metro which was across the street. Side note: there are tons of people selling stuff around the Coliseum. Super annoying but can’t knock their hustle.

We successfully made it back to the metro, back to the main station Termini and back on the BIRG in time to get back on the ship. Again the only downfall was that our private driver was late picking us up from the station to take us back to the ship, but we had time to spare.
To sum it up if you want to see ALL of Rome I would do a private tour which will cost you or stay in Rome and do not do a cruise. All in all it was lovely and I would go again.

Dashana
Signature Class Travel
"Wander Beyond The Ordinary"
www.signatureclasstravel.com