Day One - Travel day from Orlando to Rome (Civitavecchia)

(The date, I think, is May 5)

LOL!  Well, we started our journey at the wrong terminal at the airport.  Took the wrong tram, looked around in all the wrong shops, sat at the wrong common area.  Finally, I asked a guy and he told me our mistake!  Back on the tram, over to the other, rode that tram to the right gate, got boarded on time.  Whew!!  (Hope this is not a bad omen of a bad trip to come...!)

Flew to Boston, then onto Rome without incident.  The Alitalia airline really impressed us.  The only bad things that happened was that I realized that I left the rechargeable camera battery at home!!  I brought my beautiful, nice camera to Europe and can't use it...!!  I had to buy a little bitty portable one at the Boston airport, but at least I have that...

By the time Reese and I arrived in Rome, we were pretty tired.  18 hours in places and airports, and we were ready to get on board!  Another 4 hours and we were safely on our ship.

The Italian countryside from the Rome airport to Civitavecchia was beautiful.  Very green with small hills.  The houses, roads, bridges and other bldgs were pretty rundown, though, and looked like they really needed updating, but this isn't America...!!

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It's nighttime now, and I'm BEAT!  We started this journey ~35 hours ago and I'm ready for a night's sleep!!  Before I turn out the light, though, I wanted to catch up on my journal: We enjoyed a quick lunch at a buffet then waited for awhile for permission to go to our stateroom.  It's a nice room!  Larger than any other room I've had and though this is my 7th cruise, it's the first time I've ever had a balcony!  What fun!!  Too bad it's so cold outside...  It's 60's and windy and cloudy so far.  PRAYING for warmer, sunnier days - I didn't bring any warm clothes!  Ack!

Reese crashed once we got in our stateroom and I went to a quick lecture about tomorrow's port: Messina, Italy (Sicily).  Sounds pretty neat and according to the lecture, I picked the best excursion.  ;o)

Nearly falling asleep in the lecture, I dragged myself back to my stateroom where Reese was still crashed hard.  I joined him, sleeping like a rock for about an hour and a half.  :o)

We had to get up to do the "Muster Station" drill, which wasn't bad at all, then we went to one of the bars for a "Beginner's Lesson on the Italian Language" where we learned the basics like, "Hello", "yes", "no", "goodbye", and the like.  It was fun.

We then hit the Dining Room and enjoyed a delicious dinner, which pleased Reese greatly.  LOL

(I'm incredibly sorry that this is sideways.  I've tried a million different things, but I can't get it oriented right...!!  I'm so frustarted at blogspot!!  They keep screwing with the blogs!)

The last thing we did was take in a show in the Theatre, with an acro act and a juggling act.  Good night!!