Trip Index
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Saturday morning, we met in the dining room for our last breakfast at Hotel Raffaello. Kaleb and Frank went out to purchase sim cards for their cell phones, and a couple others took the Metro to the Vatican to retrieve the hotel umbrellas left at the cloakroom two days ago
during our tour.
Our Celebrity Equinox cruise was departing from the port of Civitavecchia. There were many
different ways of reaching there, such as private transfer, local rail, or fast train. I decided on the fast train (Frecciablanca) as we were close to Termini station (another reason why we stayed at a hotel in the vicinity), it went non-stop to Civitavecchia, plus seat reservations were available, great for a large group of people traveling together. However, these fast trains have few good departure times for cruisers compared to local rail, so plan accordingly.
How I booked the train: there happened to be a 2-for-1 promotion on Saturday train tickets...how convenient! What wasn't helpful was that the sale fare would not show up if you clicked on "Find best price" in the search box on
Trenitalia's website. Fortunately I didn't give up and assume that the tickets were all sold out as there were recent reports on our cruise's
roll call on Cruise Critic that people were buying the sale tickets. I eventually tried leaving the box unchecked despite common sense to do so, then the discounted fares appeared. I also found the
Seat 61 train travel website helpful to understand how to book tickets.
Since at the time, only 6 of us were going on the trip, I booked 6 first class tickets and selected a 4-seat and 2-seat table (as the train was a 1-2 configuration). The thing with the 2-for-1 was you had to buy them 2 at a time (cannot buy 6 and get charged for 3), so I ran into some difficulty selecting seats for the subsequent pairs of tickets so that they were close to the original pair. The default selection is something like "best available" (which may not be where you want, ie. a different carriage), but you can bypass this and select the carriage and seats you want. I don't remember exactly what I clicked on, but it is doable, so keep at it if you are in this situation.
Back to our regularly scheduled programming: Our train was departing at 11:57am and it was getting down to the wire and yet our friends had not returned back from the Vatican! It was pretty nerve-racking but eventually they came back in the nick of time, even though only 2 out of the 3 umbrellas were located. I think that was very successful given that most people probably wouldn't have gone back! Since it had been a few days, unclaimed items were moved from the museum cloakroom into a separate storeroom in the Vatican so our friends got to enter areas that visitors rarely see.
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| the back of St. Peter's courtesy of Kristi |
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| amazing to have found our hotel's umbrellas in that pile! |
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Since the uneven sidewalks from the hotel to Termini were somewhat challenging to navigate with luggage (especially heavy bags), along with a slight uphill slope, a few of the group hired a taxi to take them the short distance to the station. The rest of us sweated and dragged our bags. Eventually we all made it there, but we had an interesting run-in...
The experience started when a plain-clothed girl (not wearing a uniform or name tag) approached to "help us" locate our train platform. I saw her standing around in the middle of the entrance area by herself and it seemed odd that a local would be hanging out to help tourists get to where they're going. It is minutely possible that someone would want to do this, but it was hard to give her the benefit of the doubt so I was on my guard. As we were rolling our bags towards the platform, we were intercepted by a couple of young men continually asking if we wanted help carrying our bags. We told them many times "no thank you" and kept walking. Unfortunately, our train wasn't there yet, so we were waiting on the platform while the young men hung around off to the side. Once the Frecciablanca arrived, we located the carriages and when I was boarding and lifting my luggage onto the train, one of the young men pushed by me up the steps and grabbed my bag. This also happened to another one of the couples. When we sat down in our assigned seats, the young men placed the bags on the luggage rack above, then kept pestering us for tips and getting in our face. I told them that I didn't have any cash, and Kaleb just gave him whatever coins he had in his pocket and turned them inside out to show that we didn't have any more. Our "helper" was frustrated but he got off the train. Our other friends kept telling the second young man that they never asked for his help and refused to pay. In the end, I wasn't sure if they gave him any money or not, but eventually he got off the train as well. So beware at the train station; I believe that the young lady was identifying tourists for her gang to prey upon them. Normally we have our eyes wide open to trickery and we aren't afraid to tell insistent people "no thank you", but I thought it was a clever move for the guy to slip right in when I was in the middle of lifting my luggage onto the train. If this ever happens again, I will not feel bad giving a hard elbow poke in the gut and a good kick to the rear.
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| the platform sign was broken...was this our train? |
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| must...connect... |
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As Quinn and Tammy booked the cruise at the last minute, first class was sold out, so they secured seat reservations in second class in different carriages. Second class was a bit crowded due to more seating in the carriage.
It was a pleasant 40-minute ride to Civitavecchia. There was free wi-fi on the train so everyone could be entertained through their electronic devices. Many of the riders were cruisers so when we got off, we just followed everyone out the train station, crossing the street and walking towards the port.
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| approaching Civitavecchia |
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| arriving at the train station |
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| meeting up with everyone in front of the station |
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| port entrance |
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Since this was a working port, we could not simply walk up to our cruise ship berth. There was a bus stop just shortly after the port entrance where cruisers waited for shuttles to take them to their respective ship. We waited there for quite some time as there weren't enough buses to carry everyone. A few people disregarded the warnings of the port employees and started walking towards the cruise ships...not a good idea. It was a long distance and so hot outside. I was glad I wore a hat!
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| waiting at the shuttle stop |
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| shuttle buses arriving (not all of them looked like these) |
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Eventually we made it on a shuttle bus and rode out to where
Celebrity Equinox was berthed.
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| check-in tent |
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| we made it! (courtesy of Frank) |
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We checked in and got on board rather quickly. Complimentary welcome glasses of champagne were handed out. Our balcony cabin was very nice and for the price we paid, the lifeboat "obstruction" wasn't bad at all. We also received coupons...the free scoop of gelato was a good one!
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| so you can't see all the way down, no problem |
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| our balcony cabin on Deck 6 |
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| bathroom |
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| toiletries |
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| bar prices |
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| even though we bought the drink package, it doesn't include mini-bar |
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| Classic member welcome letter |
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| Select member welcome letter |
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| Classic member coupons |
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| Select member coupons |
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| limited smoking areas |
The last page of Celebrity Today for Saturday, June 28:
We were starving, so we went to the buffet for lunch. I really liked the layout of the Oceanview Cafe where there were multiple food stations scattered around (meats, salads, fruit, desserts, etc.) so people could get whatever they wanted without waiting in a single line like old-style buffet set-ups.
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| I myself didn't eat much, haha |
Then it was sailaway...time to take advantage of our beverage packages! The kind of package we purchased was printed on the cruise card so servers knew what you could order.
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| tropical drinks at "Slush" |
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| bye bye Civitavecchia! |
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We then went exploring around this beautiful ship. There were a lot of different themed bars. The Quasar night club was a bit small, but the Sky Observation Lounge made up for that. There was a dedicated comedy club stage. The top deck had a lawn with real grass. Adjacent to this was the "Hot Glass Show" by the Corning Museum of Glass, where you can watch professional glass blowers creating masterpieces at certain times on the cruise. The area where the specialty restaurants were located didn't even feel like it was on a ship...very contemporary, almost Vegas-like.
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| seating at Quasar night club |
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| hanging seat at Quasar |
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| public toilet with natural light! |
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| Lawn Club with real grass |
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Our dinner time was "traditional late dining", set at 8:30pm every night. The food was consistently excellent. Service was usually good but it always seemed that our waiter was short-staffed, hardly seeing our assistant waiter much. We also found it cumbersome to order drinks with our beverage package; certain kinds needed to be ordered through the sommelier and others through the assistant waiter and it would take a long time to receive them. After a few nights of this, some of us started bringing cocktails from the bars outside into the dining room to enjoy until the dinner-time drink orders arrived.
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| "everyday" menu |
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| tonight's menu |
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| Silhouette Dining Room |
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| three kinds of dip for bread |
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| I ordered escargot almost every night |
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| Thai beef spring roll |
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| mushroom soup |
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| roasted carrot cumin salad |
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| seared salmon |
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| homestyle pork chop |
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| dessert menu |
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| after-dinner drinks |
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| banana-blueberry crepe |
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| chocolate cherry trifle |
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Since we had an early start the next day, no late-night activities for us!
Our port-intensive seven night cruise would keep us busy for the next few days. Next stop...Florence and Pisa! Stay tuned...
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