Last Day in Rome and Heading to the Ship

This morning we woke up to another glorious Roman morning and breakfast delivered to our room. A tray full of chocolate puffs, toasted cheese and bologna sandwich, chocolate filled croissants, yogurt, fruit juice, and coffee. Yesterday they brought us two trays full but I think she figured out that the four of us could only handle half of that.

We got things packed up and then headed out for a stroll down our street to check out all the souvenir shops. We think that all of them had to have been owned by the same people because they all had the same exact stuff. I was looking for my usual things...porceline doll for Addie, Christmas ornament, pocket knife for Harry and anything else unusual for me and Kevin. Well all I could find was a tea towel with Roman sites on it (I've been starting to collect them for all the castles I go to in England). And in the end I picked out a little pull toy puppet with an Italian flag painted on it for a Christmas ornament. A bit disappointing for shopping but mom and dad got a few "fun" things that I can't mention yet as they are going to be gifts for my family.

After shopping we made our way back up the train station to head out to the port. Well, I hadn't found exactly how we were supposed to get tickets for the train out to the port...just thought we'd figure it out when we got there, but the station was a zoo. Kevin and I finally spotted a board that had the regional trains on it and we were starting to figure out what we needed to do a lady approached us and asked if she could help. She punched a bunch of numbers on the self-service machine and got it to the screen we needed to pay. Then came the kicker...she started asking us for money for her helping us. So much of kindness of the heart to help a stranger, but we later saw her setup of just standing around the machine and asking everyone who approached it if they needed help. I guess it was very opportunistic of her to set herself up that way but I just felt scammed.

The train ride was hot and humid and really tough on the kids because they were so uncomfortable. It took just over an hour to get to the port and thankfully we met a couple on the train who knew which stop we were actually supposed to take since this particular train's final destination was Pisa.

We hopped off the train and started walking. I had read that there was a free shuttle service once you reach the entrance of the port so we headed towards the boats. Well, it so happened that a religious demonstration was going on and the free shuttles weren't running or at least not very often. Royal Caribbean had a shuttle just outside the train station but they wanted $25US/person to ride to the boat which we thought was crazy so we kept walking. Well after about 45 minutes of walking through this active port we finally got to the ship....absolutely crazy. On the way our big suitcase's wheel had split so Kevin was pulling a lame duck and made it more difficult of a walk for him.

After checking in we treated ourselves to a 3:30PM lunch in the Windjammer Cafe and settled in to our rooms. We were finally on our way!!!