Rising at 9, we took our time and had a nice rooftop breakfast overlooking Villa Bourghese Park, joined by a large royal seagull on the railing next to our table watching our every move. We were sad to have to leave Rome after only one day. This time in Rome has been much hotter than our previous visit, and much shorter – I would have loved to have had more time visiting the places that Paul may have been. But today we had to leave for the port to board our ship, the Celebrity Constellation.
We drove through the Italian countryside which looked very much in need of rain. After an hour trip we arrived at the port and went through the boarding process.
We checked out the ship and had lunch at the buffet.
We finally settled into our cabin and unpacked our luggage right before dinner. At dinner we met the two couples that will be our dinner partners for the next 9 nights – Alex and Jean from England, and George and his wife from Scotland. We are the ones with the odd accents at this table. We enjoyed getting to know them and listening to them talk about British politics; many of their problems sounded very similar to the U.S.
View from our balcony at sail-away
We ended the night by going to the ship theater to hear a British comic, who was pretty funny. He made fun of Americans, as well as Brits and Australians who made up most of the audience. He played to the older members of the audience by talking about the old days “when the web was where spiders hung out, a keyboard was on a piano, and the hard drive was just a long trip home after work. We went back to the cabin (amazingly gelato-free for the day) and hit the sack in preparation of a long day tomorrow, heading to Pisa and Florence.
Buona notte