Civitavecchia on Mondays.

Hi. We are visiting Civitavecchia on P&O B608, but we decided not to visit Rome this time.

So I started researching what I could reach by public transport or hire car. There's quite a few things to visit we would enjoy.

The problem is we are there on 4th April, which is a Monday, and everything I have come across (like the Etruscan tombs and similar archaeological sites) is shut on Mondays.

The two things that might not be (!) are the hill towns Orvieto and Civitavecchi di Bagnoregno, but these are 90 minutes plus away which means 3 hours in a car, which is a bit much.

Does anyone have any suggestions for something that might be open on the day of the week when Italy appears to stop ? Is anywhere open - do all the shops, museums, etc. shut ?

Were you able to find things to do? We will be in same port on June 27 - also a Monday and am running in to the same issues. Advice would be appreciated!

Were you able to find things to do? We will be in same port on June 27 - also a Monday and am running in to the same issues. Advice would be appreciated!

All the shops are open. Museums are shut.

The Vatican museums are closed Sunday, open Monday.

In the end we just pottered around Civitiavecchia. It's an okay town, nothing thrilling, but okay :) It's like (say) Harwich port/town, it's perfectly nice but there's nothing exciting there. The oddity is the transport from the ferry. Walking into town takes about 30 minutes or so. The queues for the shuttle were longer, but the shuttle drops you at the roundabout near "Varco Vespucci" (if you look on Google Maps' Civitavecchia) which is a fair old walk back to the town centre. If it's a nice day I'd be inclined to walk it, it depends partly where you are berthed.

Also recommend https://www.facebook.com/Ristorantepizzeria-Lincontro-215426051985170/?pnref=story if you fancy a Pizza, it's not the most preposessing place but the food was great (and cheap) and has good wifi if that matters to you.

I think if we did it again on MOnday I'd either (i) go to Rome or (ii) hire a car (there are four of us) and just explore the area (iii) stay on the boat.

I did find places to visit to visit on a Monday - the hilltop towns - but they were probably 70-90 minutes drive away, which is pushing it for me under our own steam. (A family would have been left behind, but there was a delay leaving the port for some other reason and they just made it back). There's plenty of things not far away if it's not Monday.

The one thing I do recall that may have been open (?) is there is a Roman site fairly close by (Terrania ? something like that ?) and P&O were running a shuttle there. I checked with them because being Monday, it was supposedly shut (I'd already checked it, it was the first thing I found) and their response was along the lines of "if we're there, they'll open", which presumably they would be, you couldn't run an excursion there if it was shut. So that might be worth looking into.

http://www.lonelyplanet.com/italy/lazio/tarquinia/introduction

This has to be where the trip was going to. It will be my first choice when we have exhausted Rome