kathleen21

And finally to the St. Peter’s square and the Vatican.

It is so crowded already. We arrived here at 1213. Seventeen minutes early, right? Wrong. The square was filled with people, and the Pope was visible on several large TV screens saying his blessing. Because it started at 1200! Whoops. Almost immediately, he was done – and all those thousands of people turned towards us and started walking.

Yikes! Quick, honey, let’s go! We had spent time here the last time we were in Rome, there was no way I was going to deal with those crowds. Guess we will be watching the Pope on youtube.

Instead, we turned quickly around and made our way to the Trastevere area, looking for lunch.

By this time we both wanted to sit down in a restaurant for a full meal. And a drink! It was a Sunday afternoon so every restaurant was busy, and we were hungry so all the menus looked good. We settled here, where I order the ‘menu of the day’ and my first Aperol spritz.

The food was fine, the drink was refreshing and we were ready to carry on. After all, this trip we only had one full day in Rome, and we were determined to make the most of it!

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More city walking- Piazza Navona

Crossing the Tiber river and the Castle d’Angelo. Almost there!

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PreCruise Day -3

I woke up at 0800. Too excited to sleep! We’re in Rome! Our hotel included a “continental breakfast” at a Bar around the corner. It was coffee or tea, orange juice, and whatever pastry the man at the counter picked out for us.

Thought for sure we would be hungry in an hour. Not. That tasty snack lasted us for 4 hours of walking! Our main goal for the day was to make it to St Peters square to hear the Pope give his blessing at 1230. I knew for sure that was the time, so I didn’t even look it up in the travel novel I wrote. You know where this is going, right? But that is in a couple of hours. At 1000 we figured we had plenty of time to walk a couple of miles through the city.

This is where we had some problems. The maps.me app I downloaded on to the Kindle fire (that I bought just for this trip) didn’t fully work. So we could plan a walking route to the Vatican, but it didn’t track you as you moved along the route. And all the streets changed names constantly. Plus, the paper map the hotel gave us was missing many details.

I hadn’t wanted to pay the mobile phone companies prices to get international service, but after 10 minutes of this my husband got frustrated and tried to activate it anyway and pay for the day. But that didn’t work. Finally we ended up following the signs to one landmark after the other, asking people for directions as needed. This worked so well! We didn’t get lost the rest of the day!

Since we still had over 2 hours to get there, we enjoyed our walk down this main street, stopping at shops and churches along the way.

St. Paul’s Within the Walls Episcopal Church

McDonald’s- we needed bathrooms and were still thinking about free WiFi. Too hard to log on though.

To the Trevi fountain-

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Thank you to everyone that has responded. It’s more fun to do a review when it feels like a conversation and not a presentation

Ok. Back to business. When we last left off we were on the plane from Copenhagen to Rome. This plane was not nearly as fancy as Norwegians Dreamliner that we took to get to Europe, but it did the job. We ate our sandwiches, took a nap, and landed on time at 11:15pm.

Rome! We stumbled out of the plane looking groggy – prime meat for the local taxi drivers all vying for our business at the airport exit. At 1130 pm the public transportation choice was a bus. I knew we wouldn’t have it in us to deal with that, so I had budgeted for a taxi. I had assumed we would walk into a taxi stand and pay 50E to get to our hotel in the center of Rome. We ended up being surrounded by people who wanted us to take their taxi service. I knew we should probably keep walking to the taxi line, but it just seemed like too much effort. We chose a friendly, English speaking guy and followed him to an airport counter. We paid 20E each (charged it, didn’t need my cash here either [emoji57]and waited 15 minutes for him to round up 2 other couples. It took 1.5 hours from the time we paid until we got out at our hotel near Termini station. Could have been faster I guess. But we did get a night time tour of Rome that we wouldn’t have seen otherwise. We are not people that are usually out exploring at 1am. (We must have been tired, because we didn’t take any pictures during the drive. I found theses on Shutterstock.com. They portray the feeling of the city at night, with the orange lighting and lit up monuments.)

There were tons of people hanging out. Tricky sideways parking along the crowded streets!

The drive actually turned out to be an introduction to the city, and the college students we were sitting next to had interesting stories to tell.

At 1AM we arrived at hotel – the Morrison executive rooms. Thanks to Tripadvisor I knew to look for the small bronze plaque on the side of the stairs. And I knew it would be up several flights. Later we found that there is a tiny elevator down the hall. The room felt like a Roman apartment. It’s located in a quiet area near Termini station and across from the British Embassy. There was a kettle, some wrapped pastries, a fancy bathroom and a hard double bed with flat pillows that was somehow so comfortable! It really felt like days since we could stretch out to sleep. We were in bed, finally, at 2AM.

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Looking forward to your review!

Thank you! I see you are from New Zealand- we met so many friendly people from there!

definitely following along and looking forward to more. we are DIYers too and visiting the Greek Isles in September

I tried to keep accurate notes about getting from the ship into the city, and I will post that information. Gonna take a few days to get that far in this review, though- I have so many things to say:D

Looking forward to your review, we visit Copenhagen when we sail on Orchestra later this year.

We barely skimmed the surface of that city! It was a great walking town. You will have a wonderful trip!

The person next to us on the train helped us plan at a route around the center of the city. I love it when local people want to help and give you advice! The first thing on our agenda was coffee and food. By now it was about 2pm local time, and the hard roll and colored water they gave us for breakfast on the plane was long gone. We walked around the Nyhavn harbor area, found a much needed macchiato, and decided to pay the price to sit at a restaurant on the harbor and people watch as we ate Danish open face sandwiches.

The food was delicious, and it was fun talking to the couple at the next table about local tipping practices. They say that workers are paid a fair wage, that includes benefits and taxes, and essentially that overtipping will break the system. OK then. We spent 354 DKK on lunch, using our 300 cash, and charging the rest. There wasn’t even a spot on the bill to add a tip! So that was easy.

We then walked all around, following our locally planned itinerary to the main shopping street,

the Queens palace and gardens

climbed the round tower (50 DKK)

and beat the rain as we headed back to the airport for our 8PM boarding. It was cool/cold and windy today and I’m glad we looked ahead at the weather before we left home and packed warm clothes in our carry ons. We bought sandwiches at Pret a Manger in the airport (170DKK) since our 3 hour flight on Norwegian didn’t include food. Took a nap, and woke up in Rome!

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PreCruise Day -4

I booked our flight on Norwegian Air LAX to Rome, which included an 8 hour layover in Copenhagen. (Kind of an extra port for free, right?) We allowed 3 hours to arrive early at LAX, which is a good thing since they are doing a lot of construction on the international terminal – so getting on the plane involved extra lines and a bus ride across the tarmac before we actually got on the plane. All of that ate up an hour of our Copenhagen time… But whatever, we are on vacation!

We landed there at 1pm, with 7 hours before our next flight. What is very nice about Copenhagen is that the metro can take you to the city in less than 20 minutes. Our bags were checked through to Rome, so since we didn’t stumble over any lockers on the way to the Metro, we just kept our carry-on bags with us and headed out to explore.

Details from the Visit Copenhagen website.

“If you want to go to central stations like Kongens Nytorv or Nørreport, you should get on the metro. The metro is located right above terminal 3.

All the trains go in the same direction from the airport (M2 to Vanløse Station), so you do not have to worry about getting on the wrong train. The trains run with 4-6 minutes intervals during the day and evening. During the night the train runs every 15-20 minutes. It will take you 13 minutes to get to Norreport Station (hub in city centre) from the airport.

Tickets can be bought at the metro station and at the DSB ticket sales counter in terminal 3. Please note that the machines only accept coins and all major credit cards, not notes.”

There was a person stationed near the ticket machines to help people purchase the right tickets.

*NOTE – I had ordered Danish Kronor (and Euros and GBP) before the trip from my bank, thinking it would be helpful to have local money. Nope. Didn’t need it all. Everyone in Denmark seemed to use a credit card for every purchase, no matter how small. Same in London at the end or our cruise also. Actually, only the smaller shops in Greece, and any street market vendor, wanted cash. I have a no fee international credit card, and it was easy to find an ATM when we needed one – so that is one less worry for next time.

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Well, it has been about month since we arrived home from this fabulous vacation. I’ve shared our pictures with family and friends, and now I am looking forward to writing this review -since that way I get to “talk” about our trip some more!

I booked the Orchestra 12 day Mediterranean Cruise from Genoa last June, and have been stalking these boards reading and planning. Some of the reviews made me reconsider being our choice, but I decided that we are pretty low maintenance and would keep manage our expectations. The short version, for those that don’t want to read the following novel [emoji851] is that we had a wonderful time on the Orchestra and would go again in a heartbeat.

We had an inside cabin, Fantastica experience, which adds a different perspective from a YC or Aurea cabin. I hope to add some more detail to the few Orchestra reviews that have been done lately.

A little background info – Ray and I are from California and celebrated our 35th anniversary (in Corfu!) on this cruise. I have grown up with the Rick Steves philosophy of travelling as a “temporary local” and I wanted our cruise in Europe to reflect that. I was hoping that by using MSC we would have that European flavor we were looking for. I guess it isn’t great for their business, but I liked that none of the Americans I talked to had ever heard of MSC! I hate waiting around and would rather walk to anywhere we want go. We are also mostly of a DIY mindset, so I planned our own adventures in almost all the ports. Like many CC folks I love that planning and might have created a 50 page pdf of ideas/details that I brought along… remember that – because lesson #1 was read your notes! I am also including some information about prices as we go, because I find it interesting and I want to remember. If anyone wants more details, just ask. I did keep a written journal and tried to track costs as we went.

Our trip includes a before cruise adventure in Rome and the Cinque Terre. And meeting a special guest during our day in London after the cruise. I was able to make our 12 day cruise into a 17 day adventure. Woohoo! Here on Cruise Critic I like to read detail in other people’s reviews. It really helps me in the planning, and in the waiting stage of cruising. So I think with all the pre-cruise adventures in Rome! and Cinque Terre! that this review will be long. So sit down and make some espresso. [emoji846]Or wait a few weeks and skin to the end for a summary. [emoji6]

Teaser photo-

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Can just one person in the cabin do a drink upgrade? Or do both people have to?

Hopefully someone has a connection to MSC and can share a secret:D

I wonder if that will be the same for the Europe cruises? I hope so!

I really enjoyed reading your review. Thank you. Have you done any others?

I’m looking to book a cruise for after March 2019. Anyone have any information about what will replace the Fantastica drink vouchers? I’m leaning towards getting the Bella experience since I like a lower cabin and we eat early ( and in The Med that doesn’t seem to be a problem). I enjoyed the drink vouchers on my last cruise- that system is perfect for us, since my husband drinks so little.

Any ideas? Rumors? Guesses?

Back from our cruise on the Orchestra. I checked on the hairdryer- it’s 1250 Watts. Was fine for me.

Also, the cruise was great!

Aperol is an Italian apéritif made of bitter orange, gentian, rhubarb, and cinchona, among other ingredients. Per Wikipedia.

Just the information I was looking for.

Thanks all for answering my questions. I appreciate all the information I can get.

It is a bus service offered by the city, also called the X80 bus. (If you search "X80 bus" you'll find more information on this forum, but also Google it....)

 

It stops in front of both passenger terminals at Piraeus port and then takes you to Athens, with a several stops -- including ones for the Acropolis and one for Syntagma Square. It's quite inexpensive and very easy -- much better than using the metro IMO. I think the cost for a day ticket is around 4 or 5 euros, I am not sure if the price may be raised this year or not.

Thank you very much! Exactly what I needed to know.

Our vacation starts in 36 hours :D (not that I’m counting down or anything..) and I’m wondering about a few details.

1. Our train gets to Genoa at 1100, but our assigned time to board the Orchestra is 1445. Can we just check our bags in and come back later to get on the ship?

2. The documents say no food allowed to be brought on board. Am I safe to assume my ziplock of protein bars doesn’t count?

3. My husband doesn’t drink, so I have to use all 24 Fantastica drink coupons on my own. ;p I usually drink wine or margaritas, but I’m wanting to venture out and try some mixed drinks that are more “European “. Any ideas for me?

Thanks in advance for the help!

Just got off the Orchestra and the included hair dryer worked just fine for myself and traveling companion. Definetly not a pro dryer but heat and air was sufficient. Have a wonderful cruise! One of my favorites after 35 cruises.

Glad to hear you had a good time! We leave this week and after reading so many reviews I am interested to see what my opinion of MSC will be. I do know that we will have a great trip!

The express bus is just a ride into town and back.

Is this a city bus? How would I take that? I was thinking about the metro also, I didn’t know there was an express bus. Or even what is meant by “express” honestly.

Thank for the help:cool:

Hi all,

Looking for some expert advice. I did the status match with my Hilton Honors and got matched to Silver. By the next morning! I’m happy with that part. According to my travel agent I’m getting 5% back on my credit card. :DMy question is, do I get the $50 OBC also? And if so, where would I find proof? I’ve read so many times on these boards to print everything out...

Thank you!

Kathleen

Well, thank you for the review and that video- I fee very hip now!;p

When we don’t travel with the kids and family, I am a DIY port person mostly, so I am wondering what you would have done differently in Barcelona? Our plan is to taxi to the Sagrada Familia. We have tickets to climb a tower at 1030. Then walk back through the Gothic Quarter, using Rick Steves audio guide. We are in port 9-6pm.

My husband and I are on the Orchestra in 3.5 weeks. We are pretty low maintenance, which I expect will be a good thing on this ship. :D

You can tip the girl who does your hair in cash as you like. The hair salon is already in the Spa. Access to the Spa Thermal area: No.

Thank you!