After our Viking cruise, we spent a few days in Switzerland and then headed to Rome. The reason to go to Rome was to embark on a Holland America Cruise. The cruise-port for Rome is in the city of Civitavecchia about an hour away.

Our Ancient Mysteries cruise itinerary looked like this. The ports I was most excited about were Kusadasi (Ephesus) and Istanbul – both in Turkey.  Randy was most interested in Mykonos and Santorini, islands in Greece.

 We were in Rome just overnight to be in place for the morning embarkation. We toured Italy extensively in 2022 and spent several days in Rome. The one tourist thing we missed in 2022 was the Spanish Steps. That was where we were headed on this brief stop in Rome.. 

If you’d like to look back at the posts for our 2022 days in Rome they are Tour of Italy: Roma! Tour of Italy: The Vatican Tour of Italy: The ColosseumTour of Italy: Our Roma Wrap Up.

The Spanish Steps are a stairway of 135 steps built between 1723 and 1725.  

The stairs go between the Trinità dei Monti Church at the top and the Spanish Embassy to the Vatican at the bottom. 

The government in Rome has been trying to reduce loitering on the steps but we didn’t see any enforcement.  We also weren’t there long enough to know whether anyone was loitering.  

We walked up and peeked inside the church.

This is the view from the top looking out at Rome. Then we walked back down.  

We rode a tour bus around Rome as we had time to spend and nothing else specific we wanted to do. 

We enjoyed the sites and narration and learned that Rome was the first city in the world to reach one million people.  It took London 1900 years more to reach one million in population.

Mussolini used Piazza Venezia as a home and seat of government during his reign.  He gave speeches from the second balcony. 

We had wine and pasta for dinner at a little outdoor cafe (and later a gelato) because that is what you do in Rome!

The next day we went to Civitavecchia and boarded the Nieuw Statendam.  We have sailed on this ship before so already knew our way around.

New to us, however, was a Neptune Cabin. We were excited to see it!  We had been offered a steeply discounted price through our travel agent and jumped on it.  We will never pay full price for this level of suite so it will probably be our one and only time to have one.   

Here is the tour:

It was very easy to get used to that much room!  

We boarded the Nieuw Statendam on September 17, 2023.

Next up:  Olympia, Greece