ofallongirl

I have a question for anyone.  My husband and I will be on the Oosterdam next August 25 to Sept 8 on the 14 day Adriatic Gems and Aegean Jewels.  We are looking forward to going however I need some help or suggestions regarding our stop at Civitaecchia/Rome.  We will be in port for Rome on Sept 1 from 7 AM to 3 PM which given that it takes almost 90 minutes from the port to Rome it seems like a very short visit.  We have been to Rome before and my husband really wants to return to the Coliseum.  He felt our visit last time was very short and he wanted to spend more time there.  We also want to get a good lunch (pasta) while in Rome these things would take up most of our time there before we would need to head back to the port.  I am having some knee problems so I am not looking to do a DIY train trip and would want transportation to cut down on the walking. I am looking for thoughts or suggestions on how to arrange such a trip without costing a small fortune for a private tour.  Are there any tour companies that would work with us on this? Just looking for ideas or direction of how to do this.  Thanks for your help.

Amy and Harry

Thank you for bringing us all along on your trip. I have been reading along on your journey. It sounds like it was an amazing trip your family will remember for a long time. Don't worry bad days/meltdowns/hitting the wall happen to everyone sometime but its how you recover and carry on that matters.  Thanks again for all you effort in writing and sharing photos. Hopefully you'll be cruising again soon.

Take care and safe travels home.  Amy.

We booked roundtrip transportation with Seattle Express from one of the airport hotels to Pier 91 for HAL.  Glad to hear they are up and running.

I got on renewing our passports early this past February.  My husband mailed them from our local post office certified mail (so we had a tracking number) on Feb 22.  It did not arrive in the Passport Office in Philadelphia until March 12.  Yes the postal service took 3 weeks to get it there.  It was another 5 weeks before it got into the system as being in process.  Meanwhile I contacted my congressman about this.  I received a phone call from the State Department asking about my travel plans and I explained I am purely frustrated by not knowing if my whole renewal packet for me and my husband was lost.  The new passports were issued on April 27 and I received them on April 30. Whew!

I guess it is not surprising that the passport office is slammed this year, aside from Covid it has been 10 years since the US implemented the law that you needed a passport to travel even to Mexico and Canada so alot of people are due for renewals.  

Hope everyone gets their travel documents in time.  Have a great evening everyone

Amy

Lisa, 

I am loving your live trip report.  Loving all the details.  We are looking forward to the August 28th sailing.  This will be our first cruise on Holland so just enjoying someone else's vacation.  

We did a Berlin excursion in 2019. We did not do a Celebrity excursion but arranged to be on another excursion booked through the tour company we used for St Petersburg. It was a long day as each way on the bus was 3 hours. We saw the highlights of Berlin and learned some history. We enjoyed but were exhausted afterward. Just as a side note we were there at the end of august and it was unusually warm like in the low 90s. The bus has air conditioning however th train that others rode in as independent travelers was not air conditioned on such a warm day. I can only imagine the smell. We used that visit to determine if that was a place we want to go back for a longer visit. Plan on a 12 hour day. 

I am booked on a Med Cruise in Sept 2021.  With the way things are blowing up in Europe with Covid and the variants my hopes are fading fast for Europe this year. 

We are thinking of excursions in St. Petersburg and Helsinki and DIYing for the other ports but I have some time to think about it. We are not planning to go to Berlin on the Warnemunde day but rather go after the cruise so we can spend more time there. By this time next year we will have it all figured out!

Aug 25 on the Celebrity Reflection out of Amsterdam. I know what you mean about planning everything and then you have nothing to do. I am looking forward to planning more later this year and into 2019.

We used Joe Banana and had wonderful service for four different ports in Italy.