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Day #15: Rome, Italy

Whereas the past 24 hours seemed to be us narrowly escaping disaster at very turn, today was one of those perfect days. Such are the ups and downs of travel… and life.

Fortunately, Emerson woke up feeling fine and without an further symptoms. We grabbed a quick breakfast of Scottish food (pancakes at McDonalds) for Emerson and espressos for us. We then set about walking across Rome for our planned visit to the Vatican Museum and St. Peter’s Basilica.

The Vatican Museum clearly houses one of the world’s greatest collections of art. It’s not exactly my cup of tea (too religious; though I love seeing Raphael’s School of Athens)… and it’s usually horribly crowded (as it was today). But, Libby loves it, and I think Mom and Emerson had a good time on their first visit. Honestly, it’s amazing how accommodating Emerson is when it comes to museum visits. We easily spent a few hours looking at art, and she remained cheerful throughout.

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Before leaving the museum, we had lunch in the Pope’s cafeteria. We then headed over to St. Peter’s, which really is unbelievably massive (a thought I’ve been struck with every time I’ve visited it). The crowds were light this afternoon (no waiting), and we had a pleasant visit . Since the weather was nice, we walked back across Rome to our hotel.

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We ate dinner just down the street from our hotel at a wood-fired pizza and pasta place. The food was very good, as food in Rome nearly always is. Mom and I also enjoyed some Sicilian wine.

Without a doubt, today was one of the biggest travel debacles that we’ve ever faced. The plan on disembarking from Jade was to go pick up a rental car and drive north to see some hill towns, amongst them a small principality called San Marino. However, if it always rains on us in Palermo, the Gods conspire to stop us when it comes to visiting San Marino (see July 2010). Today, it happened in the form of confusion around rental car dates with Avis. So, the agency in Civitavecchia didn’t have a car for us.

Now we faced a dilemma. We could return to the Rome airport and get a car there… this would waste 3-4 hours in terms of travel/transfer time and mean we’d only have time to spend the day driving to our hotel in Arezzo rather than sightseeing. Or, we could scrap the rental car idea (and San Marino) and just get a hotel in Rome.

Realistically, with the delayed start, I knew that the driving made far less sense, as we’d have two days with a lot of “car hours” for only a day or so of sightseeing. Just staying in Rome clearly made sense. Nonetheless, I was rather frustrated at the thought of having made plans that would now have to be undone and would ultimately be more of a hassle than had we just stayed in Rome from the start (as we’d originally considered).

Oh well. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

On my iPhone (thanks AT&T for the $60 data international data plan!), I found a good deal on Hotels.com for a five-star hotel on the Via Veneto called the Hotel Majestic, a few blocks from the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps. It wasn’t a Marriott or Starwoods property (I checked them first because I hate not getting points), but the price ($250/nt.), location, and reviews were very good.

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As for getting to Rome, since we were already halfway to the train station in Civitavecchia, I saved the 150 euro cab fare and spent 25 for train tickets to Roma Termini. From there, we took a short taxi ride to the hotel. Aside from schlepping some heavy luggage, it was a relatively pain-free transfer.

In the end, the cost differential given a high car rental rate made the swap more-or-less a wash economically.

We spent the afternoon strolling around central Rome doing a variety of walks provided by Rick Steves’s guidebooks. We took in all of the famous sights: the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, and any number of greater and lesser churches. We had a good time…

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For dinner, we ate at a sidewalk cafe near our hotel. Unfortunately, Emerson started to feel poorly and threw up after we returned to our hotel room. So, it seems that she was suffering from whatever I had the night before.

All in all, not the best of days…

Day #13: Naples, Italy

We docked in Naples and headed off to catch a taxi for the train station in order to visit Pompeii. I’d debated the merits of the taxi/train pairing vs. just taking a taxi, but I didn’t like the first two taxi drivers we’d met (as they had little interest in our modest custom for a ride to the station). Indeed, that’s why we kept meeting other taxi drivers.

In contrast, Luigi agreed to take us to the station, seemed like a nice enough fellow, and offered us a deal (80 euro) on the private trip — 10 euros below the government rate. This would save time (at least an hour… maybe up to two) and only cost 30 euros or so more than the taxi/train option. So, Luigi become our driver for the morning, and we set off to a soundtrack of 70s slow jams.

We arrived at Pompeii a bit before 9am and agreed that we’d meet Luigi at 11:15. For a guy that’s always so-so on touring antiquity, I have to admit that the scale of Pompeii was impressive. It also required far less effort than other sites to imagine what ancient Pompeii looked like as it had been. That said, it was still sort of “meh” for me. Two things did strike me:

First, I was disappointed by the overall lack of graffiti. As a teenager, stories of Pompeii’s graffiti were one of the few time I wasn’t bored in Latin class. In hindsight, it seems my imagination overran the facts at Mr. Peet’s innuendos.

Second, without a doubt, I was struck by the casts of humans in the forms as they had perished. While crude forms of people, these objects carried so much humanity. You could almost sense their mental state of what had to be terror and panic or perhaps, in some cases, resignation. This was the only part of Pompeii that was truly “alive” to me.

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We returned to Naples and explored a little of it on foot, as the ship docks right at the foot of the historic city center. We then found a restaurant and grabbed some pizza, which ironically wasn’t the best of our trip (though I blame the pizzeria, clearly not Napoli). Afterwards, I picked up some sfogliatella for everyone to enjoy back aboard the ship, which were crispier than I expected but not as beloved by me as the prior day’s cannoli.

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After lunch, we returned to the ship to pack, while Emerson went to Splash Academy for the afternoon. At some point in the afternoon, I started to feel, well, bad… very lethargic. Packing was a struggle. By evening, I’d lost all of my appetite, and I developed a fever by the time I feel asleep (or passed out) around 8pm. I had a fitful night, but at some point my fever broke. By the next morning, I was more-or-less ok again, just a bit fatigued.

Day #11: Tunis, Tunisia

Today was a momentous day for Emerson. With our landing in Tunisia, she’s made it to all seven continents–a little after her fourth birthday. Of course, it’s doubtful that she’ll remember most of them at any level of detail. But, I had a goal of getting her to all seven prior to her going off to college, and we had the means/ability to pull it off now (which might not be possible in the future — who knows?). So, if we can do it again when she’s a bit older: great! If not, she’ll at least have the knowledge (and photos) that she’s done it once and hopefully will have a sense of being a citizen of our relatively small world.

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Now, on to Tunisia…

Not knowing exactly what to expect, we opted for an organized shore excursion. Most were variations on similar themes, but we picked one that visited the remains of Carthage and a village called Sidi Bou Said.

The area that was ancient Carthage is now mostly buried under a fairly upscale suburb of Tunis. What’s more, much of it (especially after the Punic period) was hauled away and reused to build later settlements. As a result, the sights are relatively modest in scale and scope, though the Roman baths and water reservoirs were relatively impressive. The baths were also situated ideally overlooking the Mediterranean Sea.

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Sidi Bou Said is a picturesque village located on a hillside along the coast of the Mediterranean. While it doesn’t have any individually “must see” sights, the town itself is generally a pleasure to experience. Although, I suspect some may be turned off by the somewhat aggressive street vendors hawking their wares (they’re more pushy than those in say the Caribbean, but far less so than the “gold medalists of touting” found in Egypt).

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Overall, we liked Tunisia. It was a better experience than Egypt; less enjoyable than the UAE and Oman. But, I’d certainly return there again… I’ll be interested in seeing how their fledgling “true democracy” grows in the coming years. I hope it works out well for them.

Today’s box score: +1 country (Tunisia)

Day #12: Palermo, Sicily

There are a few places that we always seem to face bad weather in. Bavarian castles come to mind. And, alas, so does Palermo, Sicily. It actually looked to be a fine day when we were sailing into port, but by the time we’d left the ship dark storm clouds were gathering.

Within a few minutes of walking in to the city, it started raining. Then it started raining harder. And, then it started to hail. Thankfully, it stopped within a few minutes. But, we spent most of the morning walking in and/or trying to avoid the rain.

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While this made our day slower going, we did manage to allow Mom to get a sense of Palermo. We visited a few churches along the way too. Most importantly, I managed to get us some cannoli (freshly made just for me) from a little pastry shop. We thoroughly enjoyed them back aboard the ship. Indeed, Libby thought it was probably worth braving the weather just for the cannoli.

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