Up at a resonably early hour this morning.
Finished packing
Breakfast, Wash Dishes, Take out the garbage, Fret about the ride to Civitavecchia.
One thing we’ve learned about this apartment – nobody (not even a golf cart) can manage to drive down this street. It’s interesting, particularly after watching all manner of vehicles successfully navigate the medieval streets in our neighborhood. But I think it has to do with the turn onto the street. Whatever it is, we knew that our driver to the cruise ship port wasn’t going to pick us up (as promised) at our front door. So yesterday I sent a WhatsApp to our host (who had made the arrangements) and suggested an alternative (the small plaza where we had gained experience meeting vehicles in the past couple of days. He thanked me for my suggestion and promised to follow up with the driver (once one had been assigned) and get back to me. As of this morning we hadn’t received a reply. Everyone else was on pins and needles because of this lack of communication. I was unconcerned. I figured that worst case our driver would arrive, find that he couldn’t turn onto the street and contact our host for instructions.
Eventually the level of angst in the room was too much and we all agreed that our best option would be to be on the street when whatever happened. As we were schlepping luggage downstairs I got the note from our host informing me that our driver agreed with our ‘Plan B’ and would meet us in the plaza. So we headed out. As we got to the end of our block our driver was just driving by. He stopped, we loaded, and were on our way.
We arrived at the port a half-hour early for our scheduled check-in time. But since there were very few people there they let us go ahead and wend our way thru to:
– Drop our bags with the porters
– Show our passports
– Verify that we had pre-completed the check-in
– Pass thru the metal detector
– Show our passports
– announce our room number at on-board check-in (because we don’t have our cruise cards yet)
– And we’re On Board!
It’s still early so there aren’t many people around. So it made sense to go ahead (in spite of what every YouTuber will tell you) and head to the buffet for lunch. As expected the attendance was light when we got there but began to fill up as we were finishing.
First difference from Viking: During lunch four different crew members stopped by our table to say Hi. Three of them tried to upsell us (specialty dining, photo packages, etc.).
I will say that the food was good and the variety was excellent (although the selection of Ice Cream is limited and constant. There are no surprises with special ‘flavors of the day’.
During lunch we watched the mandatory safety video so all that was left to do was stop by our muster station and have our names checked off on the list – which we did right after lunch.
That completed it was still before noon and wouldn’t have access to our cabin until 1:00 so we set out to explore the ship. I can’t say that we made it very far but by the time we got to the 7th floor (our stateroom level) our room was available and our luggage was sitting in the hall (waiting for our stateroom attendant to bring it in to us) so we grabbed it and got busy moving in.
Around 2:30 we noticed that the dock seemed to be moving.
Dinner this evening was in the Main Dining Room. We have a reserved table at the 5:30 seating. So we met our waiter and assistant waiter – not that we’ll be seeing them any time soon but they’re friendly and helpful.
After dinner we finished unpacking and headed for bed.
Tomorrow is a sea day so we’ll get to see what that looks like with all these people.
Till then,
R