cruizeblues

On 1/29/2024 at 10:19 AM, cruisegirl1976 said:

We used Cruise Control Transportation last year, and using them again, we booked a private shuttle from the port back to the airport, we were one of the 1st ones off the ship and they were waiting. 

How early were you able to get off the ship? We have an 11:40 flight and I’m a bit nervous 😬 

Loved your review. We leave on Wednesday to Barcelona for our first Mediterranean cruise. We are very excited to be able to go to Barcelona a few days early. Glad you had a positive experience with Barcelona Day Tours. We have them booked for a full Barcelona with Montserrat tour.

 

Glad you had such a memorable experience. Loved your review and found it very helpful.

Barcelona Day Tours did a great job, very professional and their bus was spacious and comfortable (really important on a full day tour!) I'm sure you will have a great time, the Montserrat tour gets great reviews :)

Oh my gosh, thanks so much for sharing! Such great photos and information! So glad you had such an awesome trip!

 

 

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My pleasure :) it was a really awesome trip!

Great review cruizeblues!!!

 

 

Well done cruizeblues. Maybe we’ll cross paths someday [emoji1319][emoji16]

 

 

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Thank you Hoopster! So glad you enjoyed it since I consider yours to be the "gold standard" of reviews :)

I just started reading your latest British Isles, Ireland is definitely on our bucket list, maybe next summer. Still deciding between a cruise or land vacation.

If we only can choose one Southern C. Cruise, which would you recommend? We love history/beaches/gardens?

The most important factor in the Southern Caribbean itinerary is departing from San Juan. After that, both RCCL itin's are awesome, but we prefer the 5-island as we love port days. Best island combo: St. Maarten, St. Kitts, Antigua, St. Lucia and Barbados. We have done this one three time (with slight variations, once Grenada was substituted for Barbados, sometimes St. Croix or St. Thomas subbed for St. Maarten) The Aruba route has four islands and two sea days, so a bit more relaxing and Aruba has gorgeous beaches. Either way, you can't go wrong!

Can you please tell me if there was a shuttle available through the cruise to take you back to Rome airport and how much they were charging per person.

 

Many thanks for such a great review. We will be sailing on it on 24th October.

 

Margaret

RCCL offered airport transfers, I think the cost was 70€ per person, not certain though as we had already made other arrangements. If you have more than two people, I think that a private transfer would actually be less expensive.

Oh, yes, our "favorite" chair hogs ... NOT.

 

Are the ones who save two sets of chairs -- two in the shade and another two in the sun. :rolleyes:

Saw this on Jewel last month!

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i really enjoyed your review encouraging my wife to read it as we will be doing jewel and italy in june 2019 we also have an aft cabin and reading about your trip has made me sooooo glad as we always enjoy balcony time alone we will be using alot of your tips so thanks again for a great report :cool::cool:

You will absolutely enjoy the aft balcony on Jewel! Don't forget the wine, LOL

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Thank you for all of the kind words; I'm so glad you enjoyed reading my review :) Writing it was a fun way to revisit the experience and reduce my post-cruise depression! If anyone has questions about Rome, the ports or Jewel, I will do my best to answer them. Also, I consider myself an expert (LOL) on the Southern Caribbean itinerary as we have done those routes for the majority of our cruises.

Thank you so much for sharing your trip

My pleasure :D Enjoy your upcoming trip!

A few parting thoughts...

If you are on the fence about taking a Mediterranean cruise, BOOK IT! It's a bit intimidating if you haven't been to Europe (like us) but there is so much to see, so many new experiences that you will not regret it for a minute! If you can, fly into Rome three or four days before the cruise. There is too much to see to cram it into a day and a half like we did.

Make sure you plan ahead for your "must see" items to avoid disappointment. We talked to a few people that weren't able to see the Colosseum and Vatican because of timing/ticket issues. Use tour guides if it is your first time, they will give you so much valuable insight into what you are seeing. Tours can be expensive, but you can find them for less if you do semi-private, small group tours. Check Trip Advisor and CC for recommendations. We really splurged on tours on this trip and I don't regret it, I looked at it like a "once in a lifetime" vacation.

Book your cruise and flights well in advance, they get more expensive as they get closer to departure. This was a costly lesson learned for us!:(

Don't forget to pick up two bottles of wine to enjoy in your cabin. I packed a picnic size corkscrew in my checked bag and our room steward got us a pair of wine glasses. This was a very port-intensive cruise, with only one sea day, so we did not feel that the drink package would be worth the money. Because we spent so much time off the ship, we generally only bought one or two cocktails each a day on board.

Enjoy the food in the ports, especially the various pastries if you have a sweet tooth 🙂 The food really is that much better than food at home! We ate more in the ports on this cruise than ever before and are so happy we did!

Our driver dropped us off at the airport at 2:00, plenty of time to get checked in and through security. We wandered through the shops, bought some really good chocolate at a candy store and had one last gelato before boarding our plane for the extremely miserable 9+ hour flight home.

Time to start planning our next adventure!

After this lunch I was ready to move to Italy and live here forever! But sadly, all good things come to an end and it was time to get to the airport. :(

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We had lunch out on the terrace overlooking the rolling hills, it was very peaceful and relaxing.

Best carbonara ever! DH had a porcini mushroom ravioli dish that he enjoyed also.

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On our way to the restaurant, our driver wanted to show us this tiny church that was centuries old

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A view of the castle across the lake

I would have loved to get out there on these paddle boards! Wish we had another day :(

Our driver asked if we would like to have lunch at a lakeside cafe here or see one more special little town and have lunch at his favorite restaurant, we opted for his favorite restaurant and were so glad we did! This place served the best food of our entire trip, possibly my entire life! LOL [emoji23]

The town, Ceri, was up on a hill overlooking olive orchards and vineyards. The restaurant was called LaRocca.

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Back outside for some views from a tower

After enjoying the view, we head back to the entrance to meet our driver and head to the next destination, Anguillara. This was a very picturesque, tiny tourist town on the other side of the lake. Our guide dropped us off in the center of town and gave us about 45 minutes to walk along the lake and enjoy the views. There was a small market, shops and cafes and a very nice walkway along the lake. There was also a public beach that looked inviting if we had more time.

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My husband enjoyed looking at all the ancient weapons and armor

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Inside the castle we used the map to walk through the rooms on the second and third floors. The first set of rooms was used by a Pope when the Plague hit Rome (can't remember the dates). Other rooms had furniture and artifacts, paintings and sculptures.

The Pope's rooms

The Caesar room

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Admission to the castle cost 8.50€ per person, well worth it for the views alone! They offered a guided tour at no extra charge, but we opted to do a self tour. We received a map of the castle with a description of each room and the history of the castle. Our tour guide told us that many celebrities and wealthy people have their weddings and events here, including the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes wedding. They were setting up for an event today, it would be a fabulous place for a wedding!

It looked like they were setting up the courtyard for the wedding ceremony and the garden for the reception. Also had a bar and band setting up inside the castle. All very swanky!

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As we exited the cruise terminal, our tour guide, Savino, was waiting. There were also plenty of taxis for people that didn't arrange a private transfer. Our driver was pretty awesome! Very talkative and very animated :) we really enjoyed our conversations with him a lot!

We set out to our first destination, Bracciano Lake and the Odesecalchi Castle.

We wandered around the village for a few minutes while waiting for the castle to open at 10. It's a cute little village, this park had a great view of the lake.

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Sunday - Bracciano Lake, Ceri - Rome (FCO) to Newark (EWR)

Disembarking Jewel in Civitavechicchia was a much quicker and less painless process than all of our previous cruises out of San Juan and Florida (especially SJU!) Literally walked off the ship when they called your tag, walked into the terminal, grabbed your luggage and walked out! Entire process took less than 10 minutes! Last cruise out of SJU, by comparison, we waited in a line that snaked around the un-air conditioned terminal for an hour and a half while TWO customs agents processed over 3,500 passengers! SJU isn't always that awful, but plan on at least an hour as US Customs workers take their time here!

Our flight home was at 6 pm and I didn't want to sit around the airport all day, so while planning our port to airport transfer I looked for something to do before going to the airport. Rome cabs has a sister company, Stefano Rome Tours, that offered a

tour called "Charming Lakeside Villages" pre-cruise tour with pick up at FCO and drop off at the port, I asked if they could do it in reverse and they said sure! It was a bit pricey for just two of us at 380 Euro, but would have been affordable if we had more people in our group as the price didn't change for up to six people. This tour was very enjoyable! A perfect way to spend our last day in Italy, I absolutely would do this again as it was so much better than sitting in the airport all day, especially when we had a nine-hour flight ahead of us!

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The day flew by, and then it was time to do the dreaded packing :( we needed to get most of our packing done before dinner because it's 10:30 by the time dinner is over and they would like the luggage out by midnight. We said our goodbyes to our cabin steward before leaving for dinner and gave him a little extra tip $$ with a thank you note. After dinner we finalized our packing and got organized for the morning. Our time for disembarking was 8:30, so we decided to get up early and have breakfast before leaving our cabin.

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Saturday - Sea Day - Last Day :(

Day ten of our vacation adventure and we finally get a chance to do nothing at all! I can't say that we did anything memorable on our last day; in fact, this is the ONE and ONLY picture we took that day!

Lovely shot of our super-size balcony which we spent quite a bit of time on today. Today we stuck to our usual routine for sea days; DH got up early and went to the fitness center while I slept in. He got back to the cabin around 9ish with a nice coffee for me from Latte-Tudes. After enjoying our coffee on the balcony we went up to WJ for breakfast, it was super crowded today as everyone else probably slept in also! After breakfast we shopped the 2/$20 tee shirt sale on the pool deck to pick up a few new RCCL shirts. After shopping we changed into our swim suits and headed up to deck 12 to get some sun. It's usually easy to find lounge chairs on 12 forward overlooking the bow, but today even the upper decks were crowded. I did observe some very blatant chair hogging in the Solarium area! We hung out in the pool, swimming and sitting on the ledge while watching for a pair of chairs to open up and I noticed one couple actually had a pair of loungers in the sun and another pair in the shade, they left the sunny set to spend time in the shade, but left their stuff behind in the sun. Wow, pretty rude when clearly there were people waiting for open seats! I'm not one to complain to the management, so we went down and sat in the sun on our balcony. Did I tell you how much we LOVED our beautiful aft balcony with nice chaise lounges? We went back to the pool a few hours later, same people in the same chairs, LOL.

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