Mediterranean Cruise - Day 1 - From New Jersey to Rome

I had always wanted to see Greece and Southern Italy and so a cruise was a great way to cover several of the Greek Islands and spots in Southern Italy that I wanted to visit, all in one trip. I spent over a year planning for the trip (almost as long as I spent planning our wedding!) and was super excited to see everything. Ben usually doesn't do much research or planning so he didn't know what to expect prior to the trip. I can preface this trip report by saying that we both agreed that this was our best trip out of all the trips we have taken so far!

On the morning of our flight to Rome, I woke up early at 6:30am hoping that by the time I boarded the plane at 5:30pm, I’d be tired enough to hopefully sleep at least 5 good hours on the plane. I have never been good at sleeping on planes but I was pretty convinced that this time I’d be able to do it…

Unfortunately, the plan did not work very well. Both Ben and I have arrived at the conclusion that we simply are not good at sleeping on planes. The combination of being woken up by flight attendants passing by with beverage and food service along with cramped upright seating made it pretty difficult to fall asleep and then stay asleep. We both did not get more than a few scattered hours of sleep on the seven hour flight.

Nevertheless, when we arrived, we were determined to stay awake because we were planning to tour the Vatican and Saint Peter’s Basilica. We also were not able to check into our hotel until the early afternoon.  This whole staying-awake thing turned out to be much more difficult than we had anticipated. We were literally dragging our bodies through the streets of Rome. It was slightly easier when we were walking around but very difficult to stay awake any time we sat down / stopped moving.

I was really looking forward to the Vatican Tour, especially after having recently read Angels and Demons and the guided tour definitely lived up to expectation. It was the first time we’ve been on a tour where we were given headphones so we could hear very clearly every word the guide was saying and we were even able to wander a bit on our own and still hear her.  My only disappointment was not being awake enough to fully appreciate everything we were seeing. I forgot to add that the heat in Rome that day was sweltering! I thought that it would be similar to typical NJ summer weather… I definitely was not expecting NJ summer heat wave weather plus humidity!

The Vatican Museum is a very interesting place and crammed full of people when we were there. St. Peter’s Basilica is much larger in person than it appears in pictures and is the most beautiful church I have been in. We had originally planned to climb the cupola but the thought of climbing 300+ steps on little sleep the night before was too much. 

Bridge outside of Castel Saint Angelo located close to Vatican Museum

Saint Peter's Basilica

Vatican Museum courtyard

sculpture in Vatican Museum

beautiful ceilings in Vatican Museum

original floor mosaic in Vatican Museum

sunlight streaming into Saint Peter's Basilica

Swiss Guards

  

By the time we finished with the tour, it was almost 5pm and we were pretty wiped out at that point. We had a quick dinner and made it back to the hotel roughly an hour later to check in and were pretty happy that we would finally be able to get some sleep!