Sunday - our cruise ends and Rome begins!

We were sad to see the end of our most enjoyable transatlantic cruise on Sunday morning but anticipating getting to see some of Rome.

We arrived at the pier in Civitavecchia at about 6am. Carl saw this ship come in -- with Superman designs on the outside. Like Moby (that had the Warner Brothers characters painted on it), this is a passenger and freight ferry.

Civitavecchia is the port of Rome

We had originally booked our transfer to the hotel in Rome for 9am, but when we found out how early we would be arriving at Civitaveccia, and that Norwegian wanted all passengers to vacate their cabins by 7:30am, we contacted the hotel and asked that the car come for us at 8am. We decided to handle our own luggage rather than putting our bags in the hallway and then having to collect them in the cruise terminal. We were a little concerned that the elevators might be very busy come 7:30am, so we left our cabin about 7am and made it easily onto an elevator, off the ship, through the terminal, and outside by soon after 7am. The driver for the car service had some difficulty getting into the port (there was a lineup of vehicles as cargo trucks and taxis and busses were all coming in the same gate), but he got there about 8:20am.

It was about an hour drive into Rome, and the driver delivered us to our hotel, the Cosmopolita Hotel Rome, Tapestry Collection by Hilton. We were too early to check into the hotel, but that was okay - we wanted to go see some things on one of our two days in Rome, and the hotel would hold our luggage for us.

I told a little about our planning for this trip in the Livorno post. Even though we only would have two days in Rome, I figured we would be able to visit the Sistine Chapel, which was what I really wanted to see. But... the cruise was ending on Sunday, and the Vatican Museums are not usually open on Sunday, and it turns out that our second day in Rome was May 1, "Worker's Day", like the US Labor Day, but a big holiday in much of Europe, and that there would be very few things open on that day -- including that the Vatican Museums would be closed.

However... there was an outside possibility -- the last Sunday of the month is a free visit day to the Vatican Museums, but there are a lot of people who line up to go that day, there are no "skip the line" tickets available, and the last entry is at 12:30pm and all need to be out of the museums by 2pm. The information I had read indicated that it opened at 10:30am (the website now says 9am - it may have changed between when I was doing research and now). We weren't sure how many people might be showing up to get in line... we weren't sure when we would actually get to our hotel in Rome and how long it would take to get to the Vatican... so I wasn't holding out much hope. But now, since we were able to get off the ship earlier than anticipated, it looked like there was a better possibility!

From the moment we got into Rome, we started seeing beautiful buildings and monuments (this was a quick picture taken from the taxi as he was driving from the hotel to the Vatican -- I think it is Altar of the Fatherland -- "Grand marble neoclassical temple honoring Italy's first king & First World War soldiers.")

We saw a lot of miniature cars!

When our driver got close to the entrance to the Vatican Museums, we saw a line, and what a line it was! We told him not to worry about getting us closer to the front -- we'd have to walk to the back of the line anyway.

It probably took us 5 minutes or so for us to trace back along the line to find its end -- we joined the line at about 10:30am -- there were LOTS of people waiting in line. We wondered if there was any possibility that we would be able to make it to the entrance by 12:30pm. Some of the other 100s (1000s?) of our closest friends who were in line with us (in this section, it snaked back and forth 4 times before continuing around the wall of Vatican City).

Along the wall (this was part of the line behind us).

The line yet in front of us  -- this was at 11:51am.

Carl was taking pictures of the line and of the Burger King across the street!

In sight of the entrance at 12:17pm -- we made it!

I did not realize how huge the Vatican Museums were and how diverse and plentiful the art was.

A view out a window over the city of Rome.

We honestly did not take the time to enjoy all the other parts of the museums as our goal was to make it to the Sistine Chapel and have time to appreciate it before the ending time of 2pm.

There were also SO MANY people there that seeing the displays were difficult except for the ceilings.

And... we didn't get the audio guide, and generally could not get close enough to see descriptive panels (or we didn't even see that they existed in most cases) -- so our pictures are without descriptions...

... but the ceilings were really neat...

... even if we don't know precisely what was depicted.

I did not realize that the Vatican Museums have a lot of non-religious art.

These may be religious...

... but we honestly don't know.

I kind of think that art that is on the ceiling (and thus specifically done for the Vatican Museum) probably is religious in nature.

We came to a room that had tapestries on the walls -- they were huge, and there were good descriptions that were easier to get to. This one is the Adoration of the Shepherds.

Adoration of the Magi

The Feast of the Ascension of Our Lord

The Resurrection of Our Lord

More ceiling art

Carl getting pictures of ceilings

We finally got to the entry of the Sistine Chapel at about 12:50pm.

No pictures are allowed inside the Sistine Chapel. It is not a huge room, and it was PACKED. We managed to find two seats along the benches that are on the walls of the room, and could sit and look. There is so much detail and so many things to see. I did not realize that the Creation of Adam was just one of many frescoes on the ceiling of the chapel. (If you go to Wikipedia, you can see a picture of the Creation of Adam but then there is also one of a larger part of the ceiling, so you can see how the Creation of Adam is just one part: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Creation_of_Adam). We were glad to be able to sit down and look up -- most people just had to stand in the middle of the room and look up -- since we were able to sit, we probably spent about 30-40 minutes looking and enjoying -- if we'd been standing, we'd never have been able to look upwards for that long!

Leaving the chapel was such a press of people -- the door out was narrow and only 1-2 people at a time could pass through it.

More ceiling pictures from the part of the museums after the Sistine Chapel....

Exiting the museums there were these neat spiraling ramps.

When we left the museums, it was sprinkling a little rain.

We were hungry after all that touring, so stopped at a sidewalk cafe near the Vatican. It had umbrellas over the tables, and the rain had also pretty much stopped.

We got an order of spaghetti bolognese and a pizza buffalo mozzarella to share. Yum!

We had decided that we would walk back to the hotel, and try seeing some sites as we went. Our second day in Rome had a prediction of rain all day, so we thought we should enjoy as much as we could on Sunday.

We walked past the Castel Sant'Angelo

Tiber River

View of St Peter's Basilica and St Peter's Square from the area in front of Castel Sant'Angelo (along with a view of some of the crowds that were in Rome on Sunday).

Another view of Castel Sant'Angelo from the bridge over the Tiber

The street continuing on the other side of the bridge.

A statue on the bridge (Angel with the Cross by Ercole Ferrata)

Our walking took us to the Pantheon...

Obligatory selfie with the Pantheon

We were heading from the Pantheon to the Trevi Fountain...

Along the way, we came across the Church of St Ignatius.

 

It was starting to rain a little more, and we were ready to sit down for a little bit, so we went in - so beautiful! This was the front altar...

... one side altar...

... and the one on the other side.

... a better look at the ceiling of the front altar.

As we were leaving the church, we saw The Neapolitan Crib

We happened to see this sign along our route -- we didn't realize that we were following a path that is a common route...

... however, we did realize that a LOT of other people were also following the same route. It was a bit hazardous with all the umbrellas. We had left our umbrella at the hotel - there were lots of opportunists who popped up selling umbrellas and rain ponchos, but we had our caps to keep the rain out of our faces, and it wasn't *pouring* down!

We saw lots of gelato shops and stopped at one to get a scoop in a cone - we found an umbrella outside a nearby restaurant (there were no tables placed under their umbrellas) where we enjoyed our sweet treat.

Our final planned stop on the route to our hotel was at the Trevi Fountain, though there were SO MANY people there, we did not toss any coins into the fountain (I read online that 3000 euro a day are put into the fountain!). Carl got this picture that shows few people by holding his phone high over his head.

Another church along our route -- we didn't go into this one.

Another gelato shop along the way -- they were making the frozen dessert in the window of their shop.

What a day! We had a very short last night on the ship as we were packing and then got up early to eat and get out of the cabin by 7am. A bit of stress with finding the driver from the car service, and then wondering if we would get into the Vatican Museums or not. But we enjoyed what we were able to do in Rome on the first of our two days of visiting!