Earlier this month we took a 7 night Mediterranean cruise along with the Explorer Cruise Line, which travels down the Italian coast and into Spain. This is the first of a series of posts that repeated our trip!
We’re back from a Mediterranean cruise!!
The trip was great and I was able to share a lot. This week and the next, while summarizing each stop, it’s all about travel.
This trip was a fast trip! Our goal was to see as many cities/locations as possible without moving our suitcases 10 times. That being said, we only tasted the stop and would like to do a slower travel style the next time we cross the ocean.
Overall I love Explorer and the cruise part was amazing. The boat, food, drinks and settings were all lovely. (But Thomas is “over-cruise” for now.) Next, you’re ready to plan a Greek Isle cruise in Explorer! I love the feeling of getting off the boat, exploring locations and coming to “home” every night. You like or hate cruising and I love it. It was the nicest cruise line I’ve ever had.
Thank you to my sister, Laura Allen, for planning all the details of this trip! She is a travel advisor for FORA and recommended the cruise line. She also recommended and booked hotels in our city and helped us arrange drivers. If you are interested in planning your trip, contact her as your travel advisor will be paid with a fee from the hotel/cruise.
This is the upcoming blog post:
Travel Days + Overview of Rome Explorer Cruise + Days in Sinapoli + Amalfi, Italy Trapani, Sicily Tunis, Tunisia / Ships Dei Carlo Forte, Sardinia Mallorca, Spain Barcelona, Spain
Trip to Rome
We drove to North Carolina, dropped the boys off with our parents, then a flight from Raleigh to Dulles, then a direct flight from Dulles to Rome. I booked a United Polaris Business Class using my credit card points! (For more information, see here.) The Polaris lounge in Dulles was very nice and it was great to have free food and drinks and comfortable chairs for a 6-hour layover.
This is my Polaris Lies Ship Seat for an 8.5 hour night flight.
Now that we’ve experienced this type of flight, we admit that we didn’t do it right. We left around 6pm and instead of trying to sleep for 8 hours we got caught up in champagne and multi-course food. I did exactly what I said I wouldn’t do and basically got 3 hours of broken sleep! Next time I’ll give up my sleep 100% priority and give up the ruffles. I loved the skincare merchandise we sat down for. And it was much more comfortable than sleeping at the right angle of the economy.
Many food courses were pretty decent! We barely managed to eat the breakfast served at 1am on Body Clock.
We landed in Rome at 2am body clock time and received passport control and baggage billing without any problems. A big bonus was that we had a free shuttle in our hotel so there was no need to emphasize finding a taxi!
Walking around Rome and sleeping
Our room was not completely ready upon arrival, so we did our best we could and tried to store our luggage as we went looking for breakfast and roamed the city. First Destination: Coffee + Croissant.
Our hotel was a great walk to the Colosseum. It was amazing to see it in person! I wasn’t travelling enough to know that tickets were either sold out all day or were inside.
But we were still very close.
We were very happy to be there!
We were walking through residential areas looking for restaurants for lunch.
And we found something shoved into an alley where Italians were enjoying lunch.
There was fried egg appetizer, pasta and bread – Classic Rome!
Corso 281
At lunchtime we got a text that our room was ready so we returned the Uber to the hotel. My sister booked us at Corso 281. It’s a small hotel but had some great perks, such as an airport shuttle and a complimentary breakfast. The location was also wonderful.
Dressed up for a lovely afternoon nap, shower and dinner. There was also a sparkling rose in the travel advisor’s room, and there was a portion of it on the balcony before we left!
We went to the famous Trevi Fountain for a walk to dinner.
I loved the narrow streets and restaurants in every corner.
We had dinner at Maccheroni Ristorante on their patio.
After that we returned to the hotel. It’s amazing how old everything is famous!
After a fairly decent night’s sleep, we brought breakfast to our room! Looking back at this meal, I wish I could eat it all! However, I had little appetite at the moment.
We wandered around in the morning before taking a shower and heading to the coastal cruise port. It’s 24 hours fast in Rome. Rome was not built in one day, but was seen in one day – hahaha.
