The conference ended yesterday, so the plan is for Dan to relax and be on vacation until we fly Sunday. He did some research before we left home and decided he’d like to spend the day exploring Orvieto, a small hill town just under an hour and a half by train.

We slept late and around 10:30 strolled down to the concierge and asked about trains. She made it sound like a kindergartner could do it with their eyes shut, so we grabbed a cab and headed to Roma Termini, the main terminal for this city of five million. We were stopped in our tracks by the sheer number of fellow travelers and all the ticket machines. We could make sense of none if it. With the help of two ticket agents, a nice worker who explained which train number we were looking for, and an American couple, we managed to get to track three in time for the 1:00 train. Assuming there’d be a coffee trolley on board we didn’t give much thought to the fact that we left the hotel without eating. No trolley.

We enjoyed the scenery on the way out of town, chatted with mother daughter travelers from San Diego, and reviewed the travel book for highlights and how-tos once we arrived. Orvieto has a three track station, so we easily found our way out and located the funicular up the hill to the old town. First order of business was a meal of some sort. Problem is, restaurants stopped serving at 3:00. We found one that could offer us a sandwich–if we took it to go–or lasagna if we wanted to sit down. We chose the lasagna and were not disappointed. It was smothered in shaved truffle. The most truffle I have ever eaten. Fabulous. Dan enjoyed his with a beer and I took mine with still  water.

We explored the small town until time for the 5:30 train. Besides the beautiful overlooks, there were two highlights for us: the magnificent Duomo and an amazing well, circa 1537.

The church dominated the town square at the top of the hill and had black and white prison stripe exterior and interior walls save for the front which was bedazzled with amazing mosaics and reliefs. It sort of sparkled in the sun. The interior had a few beautiful side chapels but was otherwise pretty plain.

The well was like nothing I have ever seen and for that reason my favorite site so far this trip. Don’t think winch and small bucket, think 248 deep steps down a one way spiral staircase and 248 steps up another spiral staircase. The steps were designed to accommodate donkeys used to carry the water up, so they were deep but not steep.  It’s dimly lit plus there are 70 windows cut into the wall to let in light from the surface. It was slow going, but we persevered and went to the very bottom and then huffed and puffed our way back!

We managed to get the train back to town with no effort, grabbed a fabulous pizza near the station, and took a cab back to the hotel around 9:30.

Today was all thanks to Dan since he not only researched the destination, he chose the restaurants. What a guy!

Dan and I woke up talking about how our bellies were sending signals we had overdone it last night with food and the array of beverages. Very much in character, Dan skipped breakfast and headed off to his meetings. I, on the other hand, needed to keep up appearances so waddled off to the breakfast room thinking food would be just the tonic. Kate and Paula joined me for a hearty breakfast with the plan to skip lunch.

If it’s Wednesday it must be spa day! You betcha. After breakfast and a short stroll around the grounds, we three ladies met at the spa. First was steam followed by tea and snacks like walnuts, raw almonds, and dehydrated bananas. We indulged minimally having sworn off anything that could be construed as lunch. Then we soaked in the electrolyte zinc bath (pool). It’s a seasonal thing per our Roman hosts reputed to “tackle the negative impact of free radicals and promote the healing of wounds and ulcerations.” Then I had a massage of the relaxing, run of the mill type. I wanted to try a ‘lymphatic drain’ but was fearful I might feel less than great when it was over. I’ll save that for when I’m close to home and can take the rest of the day off if it does not go well. Anyway, the afternoon was relaxing and enjoyable.

Dan and I joined two of his guys for dinner at a little hole in the wall restaurant downtown reputed to have great food and limited availability before 10:00 pm. We snagged a reservation at 7:30 and got back to the hotel at 10:45. After all the party food earlier this week I took it easy with one glass of red, shared appetizers, and artichoke with pork cheek pasta. Period. No dessert. No seconds on wine.

Dan dashed off to his meetings just shy of 9:00. Kate, Paula, and I met in the dining room at 9:00 where we lingered over coffee and breakfast until 11:00. It’s obviously difficult to be in a hurry here.

Paula and I took a long stroll in a beautiful park, Villa Doria Pamphili, a short walk from the hotel. What a treasure for a city this size. It has thousands of acres with trails, fountains, a small lake, and a magnificent villa with formal gardens and a huge private chapel. A nice Italian woman out with her dogs stopped and gave us a little tutorial on the park and trails and made pizza and gelato recommendations should we be near the Pantheon during our visit. She prepared us for the fact that they would be holes in the wall but guaranteed the quality of the food. Speaking of food, which I rarely do (ha), once back at the hotel I enjoyed tea and chocolate past-trees, as the waiter pronounced it (pastries), overlooking the pool after the two and a half hour walk.

The conference planners sponsored a walking tour in central Rome in the late afternoon. Although I’ve done an exhaustive exploration of this area on a couple previous trips, I enjoyed seeing and hearing about it again. The beauty of a mind that retains very little is things previously enjoyed have a way of seeming entirely new later on. Lucky me. We stopped at the Forum, centre of political, social, and business affaires, as well the marketplace of Rome, which is a massive jumble of impressive ruins that date back to numerous centuries. The guide helped make sense of them. We walked the streets as a group and she pointed out all the different types of architecture, the periods they were popular, monuments that are centuries old, tombs, palaces, and finally the Pantheon which is 1,900 years old and considered to be The Sight in Rome. Its columns of Egyptian marble and concrete walls and ceiling have never been repaired, only cleaned. You have my permission to think of it as the architectural, mathematical, and engineering wonder that it is universally considered to be.

OK, back to food. Our tour ended at Casa Bleve, a restaurant in a former palace that dates back to the late 1400s, where we enjoyed a four course meal with three wine pairings plus Prosecco to start and limoncello (here’s to you Emily) to finish. Besides great food we enjoyed great dinner mates. One Swiss gentleman met his Chinese wife while living in China. They married in Singapore and he’s now living in Switzerland married to a Jordanian vegetarian. The second man is Swiss, living in Miami, married to a gal from Boston who is busy planning their vacation to Kyoto, Japan. The third was Canadian living in Toronto married to a Canadian detective. Without stretching the truth too far, we tried our best to sound intriguing.

We waddled to the bus for the ride to the hotel at 10:00 swearing off food at least until morning.

Paula, my Portuguese friend, and I invited Kate, a spouse from Sante Fe we met last night, to join us for a day of roaming around downtown. We took a cab to the city center with the intent of visiting the Jewish quarter and having lunch. Before randomly choosing a dining experience we strolled down a few of the main streets and window shopped at high-end Italian stores displaying lovely merchandise WAY out of our price range. Monuments and ruins were a stone’s throw at all times. We popped into a small church to light a candle for Aunt Jerry. As soon as a man saw me get a coin out of my purse (for the candle), he produced a small paper cup and tried to convince me to donate it to him instead. He followed me around like a devoted puppy until we left him empty handed at which time he reversed tactics and began to tell us all off in passionate Italian.

The Jewish sector, formerly known as the Jewish Ghetto, was home to impoverished Jews living in miserable conditions for over 300 years until things slowly improved in the late 1800s. The most sobering thing we saw were small brass plaques set into the black cobbles in front of homes that housed Jews taken to Auschwitz during WWII. Unimaginable! Rome is still home to one of the largest Jewish communities in Europe.

Lunch was our reward for all the strolling around. We chose an outside table at a place called Ba’Ghetto which serves kosher food. We shared two amazing Jewish artichokes. The leaves were fried crispy and the hearts soft and mushy. We enjoyed them with thick slices of bread that were warm, soft, and as dense as a sponge! For the main course we shared one of the specials: salmon and pistachio linguine. We passed on fried brain with artichokes, lamb interiors with artichokes, (it’s clearly artichoke season) and a few other delicacies far too sophisticated for our palettes. Three cappuccinos and one shared dessert topped with pine nuts later and we got our €42 check for what was essentially one meal split three ways and three coffees. Ouch.

A quick €13 cab ride had us back at the hotel before 4:00 … just ahead of the rain. We toured the spa just in case the mood strikes in the next couple days and then separated for a little down time until dinner.

We three spouses were encouraged to join the conference attendees at a buffet dinner here in the hotel. We had a delicious array of Asian food to include all the sushi and sashimi you could possibly hold, lobster, Thai, and a few Italian dishes to make it interesting plus marinated artichokes cooked the Roman way. Dan and I enjoyed the chance to catch up with two Brits, one living in the UK and one living in Dubai.

Looks like we’ll make it to bed well before midnight since we did not stay to the bitter end. ;~}

You would have thought we are on a cruise, water bound, with nothing to do but sleep late and wile away the day. We got up mid-morning and ordered room service for lunch. Yawn…stretch. Dan touched up, as in ironed, his conference clothes, looked over his briefing, and somewhere south of 2:30 we showered, got dressed, and went out for a wee bit of fresh air. You could say we are heeding Murphy’s advice to relax and “enjoy life like an Italian.”

We decided to grab a cab to Trastevere, one of the neighborhoods in the center of town, (€13) and just stroll around. We had overcast skies and a soft breeze, perfect jacket weather. We strolled along the Tiber river, which runs through the center of Rome, and popped in and out of a couple small churches where we lit candles for Aunt Jerry. But mostly we just people-watched. Right off the bat we saw a guy juggling in front of four lanes of traffic stopped for a red light. Then there was a barefooted dog walker dressed in a sarong and granny sweater with his canvas man-bag, three guys sleeping it off on a pedestrian bridge, and about 1.5 zillion tourists referring to their maps. That we could relate to. The ancient is mixed with the old and new in an agreeable way somehow with monuments, ruins, and relics around every corner. Strolling around was a nice way to top off a lazy day.

Our hotel has a shuttle that runs from two locations in the city, so we hooked up with one of them and got back to the hotel in time to change for the welcoming reception and dinner at 6:30. The reception and buffet dinner were fun for me because I got to see a few of Dan’s Agility Logistics peeps from around the world whom I’ve met a few times and I chatted with a few new people. I was surprised so see three other spouses, two of whom I know, one from Northern Virginia and one from Portugal. True to form, Dan and I were among the last to leave just before 11:00. What we were thinking? We’ll regret that in the morning when we have to get up.

After we settled into our lovely hotel room this morning we headed out to visit the ancient port city of Ostia Antica. First order of business was to figure out how to get there. We checked with the hotel staff who advised us to take a cab to the train. We could manage that on our own but from there we were like little kids without a clue who can’t speak Italian. We got to the Piramide subway station that is connected to the Porta San Paolo train station but could not find the train station. Well, who would think it would be on the other side of the coffee shop! Dan stumbled onto it and then he got us tickets…€1.50 per person each way. (€1=$1.15) Thank heaven there was a person behind a desk because we had already checked out the ticket machines and short of a miracle could not have ever made heads or tails of them. Anyway, enough about our ineptitude; we got on and off the train with no assistance and enjoyed the thirty minute ride out of town.

There is a charming village feel to the modern suburb of Ostia Antica with an impressive, well maintained old castle (that was not open) dominating the landscape. We visited the local church where we lit a candle for Josie’s Aunt Jerry and then headed to the ancient ruins for which Ostia is famous. Adult admission: €8. The ruins date back to the fourth century BC. Ostia’s hay day was between the first and third centuries AD when upwards of 100,000 people called it home and life revolved around its port’s support of  Rome with goods from all over the vast Roman Empire. The archaeological site today is 70 acres and is laid out like the city that it once was with the original Roman road made of huge black stones, an amphitheater, and the remains of a synagogue, public latrines, public water system, baths, and hundreds and hundreds of structures and side streets. A few places even have the original mosaic tile floors. It has the same basic feel as its more famous and far older cousin Pompeii (which was buried in Vesuvius’ volcanic ash before Ostia hit its stride) but is far less popular and is nestled in the country, not in a city. We thoroughly enjoyed it, so the credit has to go to Dan for doing the research and making the recommendation.

We enjoyed a pasta lunch in the archaeological park and a cappuccino and pastry before making our way back to the train station to retrace our steps to the hotel. Jet lag has a firm grip on us now (read: Dan is dozing), so no doubt we’ll skip dinner and struggle to stay awake until it’s dark.

Dan has to be in Rome for a three day conference and encouraged me to tag along for grins. I’ll be on my own while he’s in meetings, but that will still leave us a few days to explore together. Dan has done some research on things to see and do, so the plan is to play it by ear once we are settled in.

Close call: My ticket was upgradable in the hopes I could use miles to move from coach to business-first. This scheme has worked many times, however this coveted cabin must have been in high demand for this particular flight because the upgrade did not come through. In preparation to sleep sitting up, I packed my blow up neck pillow (thank you Barb), headphones (thank you Matt), sleeping mask, and ear plugs. The Greek goddess of good fortune, Tykhe, was smiling on me because one seat opened up and being number
one on the wait-list I got it! Thirty minutes before we boarded. Talk about a good way to start the trip!

The eight hour flight was smooth and uneventful. We took full advantage of our business-first seats and enjoyed cocktails followed by a smoked salmon starter, then salad followed by our choice of a main course (I chose salmon on barley with greens), sundaes, cheese and grapes, and then after dinner drinks. I made it dinner-and-a-movie by watching a comedy while dining. As soon as we were done we reclined our coveted seats and slept for four hours. Dan passed on the light breakfast, but I dug into the yogurt and fruit not knowing what the day would bring.

We set our watches ahead six hours and mentally moved from 1:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. just as the sun was rising over Italy. It was beautiful from the air. A van and driver were waiting for us and one other conference attendee, so as soon as we all had our bags we were delivered to our hotel, A. Roma, located in the southwestern side of Rome. We have a beautiful, modern mini-suite with a bath and a powder room, small balcony, sitting room, and bedroom.

The skies are clear and there’s a soft, cool breeze. We have the day to ourselves.

We covered the last 622 nautical miles from Haiti to Fort Lauderdale right on time and were docked and ready to get off first thing in the morning. Matt and Emily had a nice breakfast in the dining room and then transferred by bus to the airport for their flight across country. Dan and I had booked a late flight so we could spend a few hours with old friends from our days in Germany. They treated us to a lovely brunch and then we visited until time to head to the airport.

Questionable group decision: to avoid the elevators at all costs. Our staterooms were on the ninth deck, the theater was on four, dinner on three, cafeteria on 14, and we got on and off the ship on two. Going down was a breeze, but it was a long haul getting from two to nine after a long day at play onshore.

Favorite stops
Emily … Grand Cayman
Matt … Labadee
Dan … Cozumel
Schele … Cozumel

Favorite part of the cruise
Emily …dinner and entertainment
Matt … dinner and having a sommelier assigned to our table
Dan … happy hour
Schele … a double date every night (from happy hour through entertainment)

Random fun memory: Dan and I noticed that at cocktails and dinner the first couple of night Matt kicked things off with either a fun or a thought provoking question. Dan decided to surprise Matt and prepare a game. He passed our small papers and we had to answer random questions anonymously and then guess who said what. Matt surprised us all the following night with a game, and I had questions (but no game) the next night. Milton Bradley here we come.

We all agreed that besides not having Murphy and Josie with us, the trip was wonderful! No regrets. Total nautical miles covered: 2,052

A day at sea was the perfect way to end the cruise. Not that we were exactly tired having done virtually nothing yesterday, but we welcomed the chance to pack leisurely, enjoy the beautiful weather, and have one last indulgent double date.

Happy fifth anniversary to Matt and Emily! 

Matt and Emily napped and read away their morning as did Dan. I decided to take advantage of a backstage tour being offered by a few of the vary talented singers and dancers. They showed us the dressing rooms, costume storage, laundry, etc. and answered all our questions about getting hired, contract length, and so forth. I also enjoyed a navigation lecture by the could-be-a-stand-up-comedian captain. He explained that there are no paper charts on our ship, only electronic; Celebrity has the first female American captain; and what happens should the main steering mechanism fail. Downright riveting information presented in a humorous way!

Just before noon we four met for the Top Chef @ Sea Quick Fire Challenge. First order of business was to get two teams of two to compete to participate in the Big Challenge. Our cute little anniversary gal was chosen for one team! When the clock was set, she and her guy partner had to peel three potatoes, grate a block of cheese, squeeze a full glass of OJ, and separate eggs and whip them into a meringue…by hand. Poor Emily did the meringue and I have no idea how her arms did not play out. Her partner did the other three things. Bottom line…they won with us cheering enthusiastically. The other couple (the losers) left the stage and then it was time for Emily to compete against her former teammate, the guy who grated the cheese, squeezed the oranges, and peeled the potatoes. The clock was set for something like 12 minutes and they each had to cook, plate, and name their filet and fresh vegetable dish. A chef was on hand to coach each contestant. Three judges taken from the audience scored the entries and sadly, in spite of our spirited encouragement from the sidelines, Emily came in second by one iddy bitty point. No matter, she got to keep her Top Chef apron, chef hat, and got a bottle of champagne.

By the end of the contest it was time, by darn it, to eat again. After lunch we went our separate ways for the afternoon. Matt napped, Emily and I read, and Dan headed to the casino where he won! With our Bingo take and this, we were up a whopping $240.

We met for our usual cocktails, four course meal, and entertainment. Kudos to our wait staff who picked up my not so subtle hints that it was M&Em’s anniversary. A cute little cake and candle were presented with the dessert course. A great last day!

Labadee? Where the heck is That? Just sail 320 nautical miles from Jamaica and pull up to a small peninsula on the northern coast of Haiti, and you’ll be there. Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd. has leased the land until 2050 and created a tourist-oriented resort. The beautifully landscaped site is fenced and guarded by a private security force. It has a friendly Disney meets Caribbean vibe.

What to do was the question. We could choose from the world’s longest zip line over water, a large water park located in the ocean just off the beach, a looong fabulous slide, toboggan ride, kayaks, wave jets, parasailing. If it involves water, it’s pretty much there. We slugs decided to just soak up the ambiance and rent a private cabana. Period, that’s it. We had a wraparound sofa, two chaise lunges, beach mats to float on, towels, a cooler with water …and, drum roll … an attendant who brought us drinks on demand. We had a relaxing day to say the least.

As if our beverage packages had not been exercised enough, we were back on the ship to clean up for our usual cocktail hour followed by another four course meal and entertainment. Not Really Three Tenors had us mesmerized at day’s end. They are not really three tenors, in case you are wondering, because one of them is a baritone. They mixed it up with classics, crowd pleasers, and a big dose of humor that had the packed house on its feet asking for more.