-Lew-

As a former Princess cruiser with 500+ cruise days, I can tell you we never purchased pre or post cruise hotels stays from them. You, too, can do much better by booking a hotel on your own. Rather than stay near Termini, consider one located in an area roughly bordered by Piazza Navona and the Pantheon. There will be plenty to see with walking distance and wonderful restaurants for lunch and dinner. Book a transfer to the airport with RomeCabs or another excellent transfer service for the following morning.

Pre-COVID for cruises that ended at Port Everglades, both Princess and Royal Caribbean offered a service which included transfer of our luggage to our flight at the airport as well as boarding passes. Does Viking offer any such service?

That's excellent news...we were hoping we'd be cruising with many of the same staff again. Most of the staff we sailed with on the Splendor seemed genuinely happy and eager to serve. Come on over to the Roll Call for the February 5th sailing...we can use some more participants.

Rome2Rio shows a taxi takes just 6 minutes...Google Maps says 10 minutes. Cost is estimated at $11-$14US. In the time you have available you'll be able to see all Portofino has to offer...

Your experience switching over was not unlike mine...and I did ours at the T-Mobile store. My DW's transfer from AT&T worked flawlessly; mine did not. After a number of false starts the T-Mobile rep was finally successful. Since then I have found T-Mobile's customer service to be top-notch. I know you're an Airalo fan, but I found the following of interest, you may too: Top Europe eSIM: Holafly vs Airalo. By the way, check out T-Mobile's new Dining Rewards benefit. It's fairly new.

We have enjoyed Fattoria Il Poggio (shown in the linked video), twice...an excellent tasting and dining experience for sure. We have an overnight in Livorno this fall and hope to repeat the experience.

Our first Regent experience was 32 days on Splendor in January and February of this year. Not knowing whether Regent would be a good fit for us, we booked a PH-1 Penthouse Suite on Oceania Vista for winter 2024 as backup to a similar 32 day booking on Grandeur. Our experience on Splendor was over the top and about half way through our cruise we pretty much had our decision for 2024 made. Still, upon returning, we compared Oceania with Regent for 2024 which confirmed our decision to cancel the Vista booking. From what we have read about Oceania, we're confident we would have enjoyed cruising on Vista, but now that we have experienced and know Regent it doesn't make sense for us to look elsewhere.

Google Maps indicates travel time by car leaving at 08:00 on a Saturday to be 55 min to 1 hr 25 min. Plan on arriving at 09:30.

Well, that's a surprise! I thought you were a dyed in the wool AT&T guy... Welcome to T-Mobile!! Hope your experience is a good as mine. You mentioned $100 per month for two phones. We're at $90 for two with auto-pay on our debit card. Were you offered that option? Be sure to install the T-Mobile and T-Mobile Tuesdays apps and sign up for their dining rebate program. Enjoy...

No misgivings at all...but I should provide a bit of background... We switched from Verizon to AT&T in order to take advantage of the iPhone late in 2009 when AT&T entered the Vermont market by buying out a minor cell provider. For the past few years a cruise buddy has been touting the benefits of T-Mobile, but although I would have switched in a minute, I was hesitant due to T-Mobile's poor coverage here. T-Mobile has increased and upgraded their coverage to 5G here over the last year, so after I purchased my iPhone 14 Pro I took advantage of T-Mobile's Network Test Drive. During my test I didn't experience a location where coverage was less than excellent, so I went ahead and switched to T-Mobile. In 32 days cruising the Caribbean this past winter I had good coverage everywhere which was a critical test. I'm hoping for the same this fall in Europe. T-Mobile provides 5GB of high speed international data per billing period, then throttles back a bit. I don't foresee going over that limit, but if I do and am not satisfied with the speed I can always add an eSIM. If you do purchase a new iPhone, you might want to do that with AT&T. T-Mobile may pay off your new phone when you bring it over to them. Worth checking with them first though.

Last fall while I was still with AT&T I did purchase an eSIM for our Med cruise. It worked quite well except in Gibraltar and the Azores. If I were still with AT&T I would likely do it again; however, I'm now with T-Mobile where one of the benefits is free international data and texts and 25 cents per minute calls. You can easily get around that fee if you use WhatsApp for calling. If you're going to purchase a new iPhone, I strongly suggest you investigate T-Mobile.

Don't hold me to this as I'm no longer an AT&T Cellular customer and my old iPhone X is not eSIM capable, so it doesn't have that option. It appears you have an eSIM capable iPhone and the feature you describe may allow you to replace the physical SIM in your phone with an eSIM. After doing that you may be able to remove the physical SIM and, perhaps, install an eSIM for use while traveling internationally. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND YOU CONFIRM THE ABOVE WITH AT&T BEFORE YOU ACTIVATE "CONVERT TO eSIM." If your iPhone will accommodate an eSIM in addition to the physical SIM, there may be no need to do the conversion. My iPhone 14 Pro has no physical SIM and can support up to eight eSIMs.

It's not really something to be concerned about. Your tour provider will know where to meet the ship. We have booked many private tours in the Med and around Europe and have never needed to coordinate port schedules.

If you have a newer cell phone, I'd recommend going with an eSIM. Check this eSIM Database. It's the most convenient way to go.

The providers you've used in the past for transfers from FCO to your Rome hotel and Rome to Civitavecchia will work for FCO to Civitavecchia. A search of this forum will return a wealth of good suggestions.

We've enjoyed lunch at La Cisterna del Moro twice in Taormina and will again this fall. Excellent dishes and a beautiful view make it our go to place for lunch.

As luck would have it, each of the bus routes recommended by Google Maps require a total of 20+ minutes of combined walking on each end of the bus ride.

We've used public transportation in Rome with the aid of Google Maps. If you post the name of your hotel or apartment, someone will be happy to assist with the best option to get to the Vatican.

Welcome to Cruise Critic @sofa.king... Your arrival in Rome is later than most, so it doesn't give you much time to do a lot after transfer to your hotel and checkin. Personally, not knowing how you will feel after your flight, I'd go with your suggestion to visit the Pantheon and Trevi. You can also check out Piazza Navona, Campo de' Fiori, and perhaps the Spanish Steps. You don't mention your hotel's name, but walking from the Pantheon to the Vatican takes about 30 minutes. You might want to consider leaving your luggage at your hotel rather than dead heading over to Termini just to drop it off.

When we were on Splendor in January and February Prime 7 opened at 6:30...

Below are two screenshots I took prior to getting off the ship in Ponta Delgada. I know we experienced good service with Vodafone in other ports. I tried to manually connect to MEO and NOS without success. The checkmark next to Vodafone P led me to believe I was connected: however, I was not.

The easiest method is to limit photo syncing to Wi-Fi. Go to Settings → Photos → Cellular Data → Turn off cellular data to limit photo syncing to Wi-Fi.

For anyone considering the purchase of an Airalo eSIM, you might want to take note of the email response below I received regarding the issue I experienced in Gibraltar and Ponta Delgada. The troubleshooting instructions may come in handy if you should experience the same. Hi Lew, Thanks for getting back to us. We apologize for the delayed response due to a high number of requests. You can contact us via online chat, our response might be faster. We do have some basic troubleshooting steps as below. For local networks, it's different in every country so please check on our site. Please do the following: - Disable your mainline, WiFi, and VPN (if you are using one) for the time being. Just let the eSIM be enabled for mobile data. - go to Settings>>Cellular>>Network Selection. Disable "Automatic" and manually connect (_please check for local network on our site___) to in the network selection. This helps to stay with the network. - kindly set the speed to 3G only *(or 4G/LTE ONLY). We are checking if the area has a 3G connection more stable than the LTE one. (You can set this back once the connection is stable) Please ensure that you toggle Airplane mode on for 1-3 minutes before toggling back off, or restart the device with the same waiting time, whenever there are new changes. This will help jumpstart the connection with the new settings. We value your business and want you to have the best experience possible. We have added $5.00 in Airmoney credit, so you can use it toward the purchase of a new eSIM or a top-up. Airmoney doesn't expire and this will allow you the chance to use our service again in the future. We would love the opportunity to turn this experience around for you. Please let us know if have any questions or require further assistance. We are here for you! Warm regards, Airalo Support airalo.com support@airalo.com

When comparing cost I should have indicated T-Mobile's Magenta MAX 55+ plan for one line is $65.00 per month including tax. We used tethering in the Caribbean at no additional cost. T-Mobile doesn't say anything about international tethering on its website...at least I couldn't find it. I Tweeted T-Mobile for clarification and their response was that it is in fact included. We don't bring our laptops, but we do have our iPhones and iPads with us and, like you, prefer a larger screen to work with.

I found Airalo easy to use last fall in Europe; however, there were connection difficulties I was not able to rectify. I posted the following paragraph earlier in this thread: I purchased Airalo eSIMs for each of our iPhone 14 Pros for use in the Med last fall. In 40+ days they worked well everywhere except Gibraltar and Ponta Delgada. I was off the ship in urban areas seeing multiple cell networks available with strong signals, but unable to connect.