Civitavecchia, Italy - Thursday October 22, 2015

Well folks, this is basically the end of the 2015 blog since we will have very limited Internet from this point on.  We are currently in Civitavecchia, Italy waiting to get on the Celebrity Reflection cruise ship tomorrow morning.  We took a train from Termini station in Rome this morning at 10:15 and arrived in Civitavecchia about 11:30.  It was a beautiful ride once we reached the outskirts of the city of Rome.  We traveled through the countryside until we reached the Mediterranean coast and traveled north hugging the coast until we reached the port city of Civitavecchia.  Our hotel was very close to the train station, so it only took about 15 minutes to walk there.  We checked in and then took a walk around the small town and found a great place to have lunch.  The pasta, pizza and wine were great.  A bit later on we hooked up with our friends that will be cruising back to Florida with us.  We all walked around for a while until we located a small supermarket, where we bought our wine to take on the ship.  The limit is one bottle per person.  It is amazing how inexpensive the wine is ……….. about two Euros per bottle for Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. Eventually we went back to our rooms for some rest and then met up again later for dinner.  Tomorrow morning we board the cruise ship about 11 AM and then sail for our first port, Funchal, the capital city of the Portuguese island of Madeira.  Madeira is off the coast of Morocco, north of the Canary Islands.  We will have three days at sea before landing here on Tuesday, October 27.  After leaving Madeira we have five days across the Atlantic Ocean before arriving on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts and then onto St. Maarten and Haiti before finally arriving in Miami, Florida on Saturday November 7.

It has been a great trip and I hope to sum it all up once we get back to Florida and have Internet service again.  As many of you know, the Internet availability on any cruise ship is somewhat limited, slow and extremely expensive.

Thanks for following along on another great Sloane adventure.