Cruise Port Overview
Rome, Italy
The city of seven hills. According to legend, the twins Romulus and Remus founded Rome on Palatine Hill in 753 BC.
They say the city of Rome wasn’t built in a day… You definitely can’t see it all in a day either.
The city of Rome, Italy isn’t a cruise port city. And while it does not have a cruise port, I really wanted to include a page for it on my site because it is on my bucket-list and it is simply a “must do” city as you have to first fly to Rome for any cruises that are going out of the port of Civitavecchia. Rome is such a rich culture filled city to visit, and it really deserves a couple of extra days of your time to see it.
For our Mediterranean cruise, we flew from DFW on a Sunday overnight into Rome FCO airport on a Monday morning. Then we took the extra day Monday to tour Rome, and in the evening, we took the train to Ladispoli for an extra night at a local VRBO house in a wonderful seaside town. The town of Ladispoli is located on the train line about halfway in between Rome and Civitavecchia port. Our cruise on the NCL Sky embarked on a Tuesday out of Civitavecchia.
Recommendation: Pick a couple of things you really want to tour and see in the city and focus on doing that. The idea of doing a broad overview of the city as quick as you can seeing as much as you can in a day just isn’t realistic.
1. The immense size of the Colosseum is just magnificent.
Imagine standing in structures that were around at the time of Jesus or structures that were later created in his honor. That is the essence of Rome.
2. Having lunch at Cafe Risorgimento near the Vatican.
I would love to put some of our beautiful St. Peters Basilica pictures here, but unfortunately, we never got to see it except from the outer gates! It is a sin of the church to travel halfway around the globe to Rome and then not be able to see St. Peters Basilica or any other Vatican sites due to their greed.
The Modern Church of St. Peter has turned into the Church of Judas Iscariot.
Before you come after me with the proverbial pitch forks, let me explain that statement… We pre-purchased our St. Peters Basilica tour tickets through their own official website more than a month before our visit. We spent 7 Euros per person for our party of 9 people and we scheduled for 10 am on a Monday morning. Our overnight flight from Texas arrived on time in Rome at 7 am, we took the Leonardo Da Vinci train from FCO to Rome, stored our luggage at the Baglio, traversed the subway system, and we were at the Vatican gates on time before 10 am. We did our part, but when we got there, the lines were crowded with over 1000 people going down the street several blocks long going all the way back to the next piazza!
We then find out that all of these people in line also already have entry tickets as well, and this line to get in takes hours and hours. Basically, this is an organized cash grab by the Vatican, and it almost had the effect of the destruction of our family tour day had we not decided to go see other sites in Rome for the day. The bottom line is if you sell tickets and then do not honor them, and we have no way to get refunds, then you are no better than any of the local pickpocket’s and scammers! The church of St. Peter should be better than this! Fix it.