September 23 Civitavecchia

September 23, 2022

We explored the historic city centre this morning after a refreshing sleep and a filling breakfast in the hotel bistro. There was a selection of cold cereals, juices, frittata, scrambled eggs, boiled eggs, bacon, cold ham, cheese, sliced tomatoes, breads, jams & Nutella packets, plus croissants, mini danishes, small muffins, some pies and very nice coffee.

We walked to the seafront beach area to see how may cruise ships were in port today. There were five! Oceania Nautica, Costa Smeralda, Celebrity Apex (a sister ship to the Edge), Viking Sea and MSC Splendida. There was a gentle breeze from the Tyrrhenian Sea, an arm of the Mediterranean Sea.

On the seafront boardwalk, we saw a lovely mosaic tile crest. The beach also had a good view of Fort Michelangelo. Next, we walked to the Cathedral of San Francesco d'Assisi was built in the mid 1780s by the Franciscans over an existing small church built from 1610. It is built with Baroque-Neoclassical lines and located in the historical centre of the city. We headed toward the cruise port to find out the names of ships in port. We saw another fortress style building, since the area had papal garrisons several centuries ago. We identified the Celebrity Apex which is a sister ship to the Edge which we board tomorrow. When we returned, I checked the Cruise mapper website for the names of the other ships noted above.

We turned around and strolled through the city centre with its mixture of old and new buildings, crossing bridges over the railroad and stopped to see the small train station. We noticed that the gasoline price per litre here is € 1.63 to 1.67 per litre, which converts to $2.15 to $2.20 Canadian.

We saw election posters neatly displayed on large boards along walls near the train station. There is an election on Sunday (Sept 25) where the front runner is “Giorgia Meloni, the hard-right populist politician who is likely to win that election” She is the leader of the Brothers of Italy party. Gwynne Dyer’s September 21 newspaper article has an opinion about this election.

We continued the walk on the pebble beach and watched people swimming, paddle boarding and sailing. Then onto a pier, which gave us a waterside view of our hotel behind palm trees, several other seafront hotels and Fort Michelangelo. Walking along the beach area, we noticed some child size festival rides including a Merry-Go-Round.

We stopped for a gelato and found another gelato shop to try later. We are only a five minute walk from over a dozen restaurants which all have large patios. Then returned to the hotel to catch up on our daily home newspaper and relax. There is a picture of our GPS traced route.

We decided to have supper at Strada restaurant normally less than a 5 minute walk from the hotel, but we checked out other restaurants first. Strada is located next door to the restaurant where we ate last night. We chose Poke bowls – Larry had smoked salmon, mango, strawberries, avocado and cooked spinach on his rice. I had breaded pieces of chicken, cooked sweet potato, avocado and with a sesame sauce on my rice. We returned to the gelato shop that we visited this afternoon for our evening gelato. There is a gelato kiosk on the ship, too. We are well under our budget of € 100 per day by almost 50%. We can use that excess when we are in England next month if meals are more expensive.

Forecast is for showers for the next few days, we brought rain gear, but forgot to pack our Tilley hats.

Tomorrow we board the ship. We take a shuttle from the hotel, although it is only a 15 minute walk to the port, but there is a port security check point and two other ships will be docked. The shuttle driver knows where to drop us off. We only need to do a self test COVID rapid test today and screen shot the result or take the test result container with us when we check-in at the ship tomorrow. We both tested negative, so we are good to go.

Total steps 19,969

An aside of interest: I just read a news item that some cruise ships are eliminating Bermuda from their fall Transatlantic cruise itineraries, one being the Celebrity Edge with a maximum capacity of 2,918, which we board for our Mediterranean cruise tomorrow, three other Celebrity ships and a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship and possibly other cruise ships may follow. The reason is due to the COVID-19 Bermuda Tourism Authorization protocol requiring a negative COVID test within two days of arriving in Bermuda costing $40US fee per person applied for on line and paid in advance. It takes at least five days at sea to arrive in Bermuda from Europe. On our May cruise which visited Bermuda for three days, we did comply with the Bermuda requirement. It was a matter of concern for many fellow cruisers arranging for the COVID test within four days of arriving in Bermuda for our three day stay. Fortunately, the cruise ship arrived on day 3 from leaving near New York. Bermuda is keeping the requirement until Spring of 2023.