9-night DCL Mediterranean with Greek Isles cruise - Day 14: Disembarkation and Rome

Disembarkation and Rome

We had early seating for dinner on this cruise but had arranged ahead of time to come to second seating for breakfast since we didn’t need to be anywhere. Our server had an open table in his section (often families don’t go to final morning breakfast in the main dining room) so after getting ready and finishing our packing, we went down to Enchanted Garden around 8 AM for breakfast.

We finished with breakfast around 9, said our goodbyes to our amazing serving team and went up to the atrium to get in line to get off the ship. The line wasn’t too bad and we were able to walk right off, grab our bags and head outside. There were no customs or passport control. When we walked outside there were people there asking where we were going and I said “train station” and they had us get in line. Last time we were debarking in Civitavecchia, we had to take a shuttle to the front of the port, then walk to a bus stop, then take a city bus to the train station. It wasn’t a big deal, but it was a multi-step process. This time the city bus was right there and so we waited in line for a bus to arrive, fill up and then we were taken to the train station. Easy! (And tap to pay onboard.) 

Unfortunately, we arrived just as a train was leaving for Rome so we had to wait for the next train 50 minutes later. We caught the 10:44 train and got off at the Rome - Trastavere stop to check into our B&B for the night. Roger had suggested the Trastavere neighborhood for our post-cruise stay and it was a really cute area. I would definitely stay there again. It was a short walk from the train station to B&B Suites Trastavere where we were staying and planned to drop off our bags until our room was ready. However, our room was actually ready when we arrived, which was nice! The room was spacious by European standards and had two beds: a queen and a single so it was perfect. The B&B was basically most of the floor of an apartment building with an outer door into a small lobby-ish area and then multiple rooms from there. 

We regrouped and headed out to lunch, taking the tram up the main road (Viale di Trastevere) to Bacco Bistro, a little panini and coffee shop that was nearby. It was quick, easy, and cheap. While at lunch, we considered our options for activities, looking at the list we had made of things we might consider and decided we wanted an activity with A/C so we picked the Capitoline Museum which was fairly close by and on the same tram line we took to lunch. We hopped back on the tram to the end of the line and then we just had a short walk to the museum. 

The museum had a lot of really cool stuff in it and we went through two of the three floors, but we were already sort of running out of energy and it turned out that the museum only vaguely had A/C. It was probably still at least 80 degrees inside (possibly more) and we were all tired and hot so we just sort of gave up after a bit, even though I’m sure there was more cool stuff to see on the third floor. 

We decided to walk to find some coffee and gelato and there was a very old bridge that Roger wanted to see, Ponte Fabricio. That bridge, along with the Ponte Cestio cross the Tiber and connect a little island in the middle of the river. From 62 BC and 46 BC respectively, both bridges have a long history with the Fabricio being the oldest bridge in Rome. Along the way we also spotted an ancient theatre that sort of looks like a mini colosseum (Teatro di Marcello, the construction of which was begun by Julius Caesar and completed in 13 BC). It's so amazing just walking around and being surrounded by ancient history.

There was a little gelato shop on the island and Emmaline and I got some gelato and then we set off to also find some coffee. (I had coffee gelato, thus killing two birds with one stone.) The first coffee shop we tried was clearly closed, even though the online hours indicated it should have been open. So we moved on and found another shop, but the barista was pretty much not having our attempt to order iced-coffee in mangled Italian. We finally ended up with some cold coffee out of the fridge. But I will say, when we got back to the states, we were glad to be back to the land of iced coffees.

We got back to our room and set about repacking and relaxing for a while at which point I went to go check in for our flight the next morning, only to find that the flight had been changed and we had gotten no communication whatsoever about it. I booked the flight through American, but it was actually a British Airways flight and there was clearly some disconnect. Thankfully I had logged in to check in or we wouldn’t have known. It worked out better because our connection in Heathrow was pretty tight as you have to exit passport control and then go back in through security for international connections. Unfortunately, this meant that our plan to take a quick train to the airport wasn’t going to work so I reserved a taxi in the FreeNow app (they don’t have Uber/Lyft there).

At 6:30 PM we headed out for dinner to a restaurant I had found ahead of time and had also been recommended by the lady at the front desk when I checked in. As we began walking in the general direction of dinner, I was getting directions in my maps app when I realized it wasn’t open yet and didn’t open until 7:30. Oops! So we went back to the room and relaxed a bit more. At 7:15 we left again, arrived at the restaurant and were told they were already booked up for the evening. Great. 

We were all sort of sad that we didn’t have Neopolitan pizza in Naples so we set about trying to find someplace close that had that. We found a place a little ways up the tram line so we went back to the tram stop and hopped a tram to the pizza place. PizzaRé served up some huge pizzas that had amazing crust and were also pretty cheap (relatively speaking). The service was great and we were all very happy. Even better, there was a gelato shop next door. (Yes, more gelato!) This was some really good gelato (the shop was called Fonte della Salute and they had a TON of flavors). I had a dark chocolate orange flavor and it was so good. We had a lot of really good gelato on this trip so it’s hard to pick a favorite but that dark chocolate with orange really hit the spot.

After dinner we went back to our room, got ready for bed and finished packing up so we could head home the next morning.