Our Epic European Adventure: A Review

[PaulInPGH]

 

The most amazing mozzarella di bufala at Armando Al Pantheon.

[PaulInPGH]

 

The best carbonara I had in Rome, at Armando Al Pantheon.

[beatbandit]

Seriously loving your review! The last few posts are making me hungry!

[PaulInPGH]

Seriously loving your review! The last few posts are making me hungry!

 

Thank you! I know what you mean; pretty much every meal since we've been home, I've thought something like "this is tasty, but it isn't X from Italy." Luckily, my wife makes an unbelievable carbonara, so that helps.

[PaulInPGH]

Day 4: A Lot of Walking of Rome’s Streets, Both Ancient and Modern

Our first activity on Tuesday morning was to be a walking food tour of the Testaccio neighborhood. The previous afternoon, we attempted to ask the hotel staff whether we should take a taxi out to Testaccio, and, if so, when we should leave in order to arrive by 9:15. Remember, though, that the staff at this hotel was the worst, so we got absolutely no helpful information from them whatsoever. When asked this simple question, the woman behind the desk responded “I don’t know, traffic is unpredictable.”

“Would leaving at 8:00 be early enough,” we asked?

“Maybe. I don’t know.”

Sigh. Side note: we ended up taking a taxi back to our hotel after the tour in Testaccio, and it took all of 10 minutes to get there, and this woman would have had us leaving as if it would take two hours.

We ended up hopping on the metro, and it was only a short ride out to Testaccio (two stops on line B). There seemed to be a bit of a problem with the ticket purchasing machines, but that was easily handled by purchasing tickets from the gentleman at the little newsstand outside the station. Upon exiting the metro, we got a little lost trying to find our meeting point. Luckily, the GPS once again came to our rescue, and we arrived with 15 minutes to spare.

[PaulInPGH]

The Taste of Testaccio tour was offered by Eating Italy, and it was definitely a highlight of our time in Rome. We walked all around the Testaccio neighborhood, stopping at a number of restaurants and shops to sample local dishes. We also walked through the new Testaccio Market (it used to be completely outside in the Piazza Testaccio but has since relocated to a larger space), and we got to sample several items from the venders. This was also the tour that started my addiction to gelato—and this is really saying something, because I don’t like ice cream. This stuff, though, was delicious, and we sampled our fair share throughout the rest of the trip.

[PaulInPGH]

 

Just a few of the things we sampled on our Taste of Testaccio food tour.

[PaulInPGH]

 

Gelato!

[PaulInPGH]

While the food was certainly wonderful, it was also nice to get outside the crowded, tourist center of the city. Our small group of about 12 enjoyed walking the quiet streets and stopping in places where real Romans go to shop and eat. This was a nice contrast to many of the tours we’d take later, where you’re surrounded by thousands of other tourists and herded like sheep from one sight to the next.

Our first experience with that kind of tour came that afternoon. After a quick stop at our hotel for a bathroom break and a short 30 minute rest, we walked over to the Colosseum for a tour of some of the sights of ancient Rome.

[riclop]

Thanks for the review.

[Biris]

Enjoying your review very much! Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

[PaulInPGH]

Enjoying your review very much! Thanks for sharing your experience with us.

 

Thanks very much. I always have fun writing these recaps. Not quite as much fun as the actual trip itself, but fun nonetheless.

[PaulInPGH]

We booked a tour with Dark Rome (though when we showed up the name used was City Wonders), and it covered the Colosseum, Palatine Hill, and Forum. They billed it as a “small group” tour, but there’s really no such thing in these places, at least not that we saw. We were in a group of roughly 25, with a guide who talked to us via use of individual radios with earphones.You’ll encounter this practice in many of the guided tours in Europe, with varying levels of success.

The tour itself was just okay. The guide was knowledgeable, but had a tendency to talk in a monotone and repeat himself often. He reminded us no less than 10 times that the actual name of the Colosseum is the Flavian Amphitheatre, and, to his credit, that is one bit of info that stuck with us for the rest of our time in Rome.

This tour was very difficult physically. There were numerous stairs (many very large), ancient roadways (uneven doesn’t really begin to cover it), and hilly terrain. In other words, this tour is not for the faint of heart, or the weak of body.

Afterword, we felt that we may have bitten off a bit more than we could chew with this tour, especially on top of our walking tour of Testaccio that morning. This was by far our hardest day of the trip, and especially given the mediocrity of this particular tour/guide, we weren’t sure if it had been worth it. The sights were certainly impressive, and I’m glad we saw them, but I’d advise spreading out the experience and taking them in at a slower pace, if possible.

[PaulInPGH]

 

The Flavian Amphitheatre.

[PaulInPGH]

 

Inside the Flavian Amphitheatre.

[PaulInPGH]

Because our feet were killing us, we opted to take an Uber to dinner that evening. We again made reservations online, this time at Salumeria Roscioli. The food was outstanding, though—and this is just one man’s opinion—not quite as outstanding as Armando Al Pantheon. I made it my mission to find the best carbonara (I tried it at every place we ate at in Rome), and the one at Armando is still the champ. Since Salumeria Roscioli is partly a deli, they did have an incredible array of cheeses, which we sampled heartily.It was definitely the most expensive of the places we ate in Rome, but still very much worth a visit.

Very, very tired after such a long day, we took another Uber back to our hotel to shower and pack our things. Tomorrow, we’d start our “vacation within a vacation” and board the NCL Epic!

Up next: finally, something familiar.

[PaulInPGH]

 

A selection of amazing Italian cheeses!

[njmomof2]

Really enjoying your review. While I can't see the pictures here on my office computer, I'm definitely enjoying your written report.

 

Looking forward to the cruise portion of your review.

[PaulInPGH]

Really enjoying your review. While I can't see the pictures here on my office computer, I'm definitely enjoying your written report.

 

Looking forward to the cruise portion of your review.

 

Thank you. This is probably the first review on CC that manages to take four pages and 60 plus posts to get to the actual cruise review:) Should have some up this evening.

[cabincop]

Hi Paul. This was my last trip to Rome & because of my leg injury I wasn’t able to do a lot of these tours. I did what I could. I love your review. And your pixs are amazing. Nice to have met you & your wife. Looking forward to more of your review.

 

 

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[PaulInPGH]

Hi Paul. This was my last trip to Rome & because of my leg injury I wasn’t able to do a lot of these tours. I did what I could. I love your review. And your pixs are amazing. Nice to have met you & your wife. Looking forward to more of your review.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

It was great meeting you, as well. I hope you all had a great rest of your day in Barcelona. The guide gave us a restaurant recommendation that turned out to be absolutely unbelievable and which I'll detail shortly.

[cabincop]

Looking forward to it. Yes Casey Lisa Jo & I found an amazing tapas place too. I love traveling Europe. Btw next year I’m doing TA from England to Iceland. I’ll be stopping in Paris. It’s on the Jade. Hint hint

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

[PaulInPGH]

Looking forward to it. Yes Casey Lisa Jo & I found an amazing tapas place too. I love traveling Europe. Btw next year I’m doing TA from England to Iceland. I’ll be stopping in Paris. It’s on the Jade. Hint hint

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Forums

 

Sounds like a great cruise. We probably won't make it back to Europe in 2018, mostly because we need to spread out our larger trips, financially speaking. We're doing the Escape to Bermuda in September, and we're kind of looking forward to a vacation where we do nothing but relax. 2019, though, Europe is definitely on the table.

[PaulInPGH]

Day 5: The Trip Gets Even More Epic

We waffled a bit on how to get to Civitavecchia. Should we brave the train, or should we be lazy and set up a transfer. While I’m sure we could have managed the train, I’m really glad we decided to use a car service, especially given how tired we were following the previous day’s exertions.

We used the shared shuttle service provided by Bob’s Limos. It cost 75 Euros for the two of us, which seemed like a decent price. They picked us up at 10:30 (so we got a chance to sleep in, which was delightful), and after two stops to pick up a couple other parties, we made it to the port a little before noon.

[PaulInPGH]

This cruise was kind of interesting, since most of the passengers embark/disembark in Barcelona, while only a small number join in Rome. There was a little bit of a feeling like we were joining a cruise in the middle (the dailies were geared entirely toward the Barcelona passengers), but on the whole it didn’t make a huge difference.

One amazing thing, though, was the embarkation process in Rome. Because only a couple hundred people were embarking, the process was incredibly fast and easy, and it is sure to spoil me for all future cruise embarkations. We walked right into the terminal and were on the ship in about 10 minutes!