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Home Nov 19

 We departed the hotel at 7am, and the Princeps had prepared a sack breakfast to take with us:  dry pork sandwiches on white bread (pretty inedible), some bottled pear juice which was pretty good, some water, and some packaged toast which was destroyed in transit to the airport.   We had several choices of transportation:  a cab costs about $65, a shuttle arranged by the hotel was about $80, but we chose to walk a few blocks to catch a bus for less than $20 total.  The bus was clean and comfortable (though the driver warned me we couldn't eat our sack breakfast on the bus), and it had wifi.  Once we got out of the Rome city center, the oldest part of the city where our hotel and most of the tourist hotspots were concentrated,  the roads became wider and less congested.  It took an hour to get to the airport, which is modern and efficient, though we had to pass thru multiple security checkpoints.  We left on-time, the flight was fine (o...
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Rome Nov 18

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 Our last full day in Rome.  We hiked down to the Colosseum and joined our tour. The tour guide wsa much better in English than our previous two Italian guides.  It made a big difference.    We first visited Palatine Hill (there are 7 "hills" in Rome).  This was where Rome was founded around 953 BC , and was the first city in the world to reach 1 million population around 300 BC .  The second city ( London ) reached 1 million 1500 years later! (The population shockingly fell to 30,000 in the 6th century due to wars, plague, taxes, inflation, and general chaos as the Roman Empire fell apart) Palatine Hill was home to the rich of the city and then emperors. We saw this arch, called the Arch of Titus , through with Emperor Titus marched Jewish prisoners from the Jewish-Roman War around 71AD to celebrate Rome's victory , and the war spoils helped finance the building of the Colosseum.    Palatine Hill overlooks the Roman Forum , w...
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Rome Nov 17

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 The Princeps (latin for "foremost") Boutique Hotel is a small one on the fourth floor. Here is the view from our room window, it's the backside of a basilica, the largest of 80 in the city dedicated to the Virgin Mary (over 900 churches in the city!).  There were long lines to get into the basilica for Sunday night mass, each person had to pass thru security.    It serves a fine breakfast, not nearly the magnitude of the Neptune, but very satisfying: bacon and eggs, toast, cereals, pastries, a cappuccino machine, etc. Holy cannoli!   We used a hop-on hop-off bus to get to our Vatican City tour.  The bus started running at 9am, and the tour was at 11am, though they said we must be there at 10:30...repetitive texts nagged me about that fact.  The bus had to make 5 official stops before the Vatican City stop, so we felt good about making it on time.  Unfortunately, the traffic is Rome is horrendous, and we got to the required stop at 10:05.  We...
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Rome Nov16

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 A few thoughts as we leave the Viking Neptune: = very comfortable cruise.  The cabins were spacious (for 2 people), temperature was always suitable, and there was almost no noise from adjacent cabins or the hallway.  A big part of that could be because Viking doesn't allow kids <18 to cruise.   - there was always something to do if you chose:  educational lectures, shows, board games and books, just sitting in lounge chairs watching the ocean go by. The pools appeared to be mostly unused, perhaps because it's November, and perhaps because there's no kids.  I'd guess the average age of passengers for this particular cruise is around 55-60.  There was a daily bulletin distributed in the evenings to make you aware of all the available activities.  - this feels like just the right size of ship.  The river cruises I've been on had much smaller cabins and fewer amenities, and the megaship we took in Alaska (4000 passengers) was too big and...
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