Review of Silhouette Nov 2016 Transatlantic

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Nothing like the Trevi Fountain to give one a second wind, so instead of going back to the hotel, we started walking and discovered the Pantheon wasn't that far either!

 

 

 

 

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Astonishing history

 

 

 

 

 

 

[CrusieToy]

So off to bed we went, and when we woke up, lo an behold we were in FRANCE. Toulon France! It was a Monday and we weren't going to work! Our Monday morning view from our balcony:

 

 

So now we had to finally pay attention to what our Daily said...we needed to purchase $15 ferry tickets at the Service Desk in order to proceed into port. Now mind you we had stopped by the desk the day before to get Husband's sea pass card exchanged as it wasn't letting him into our cabin, but we weren't smart enough to buy our ferry tickets at the same time. :rolleyes: So off to line up we went:

 

 

It wasn't a bad wait though, and goodness knows we weren't in any hurry. We had no plans in Toulon other than to get off and wander.

 

that is a great photo! (the guest relations one) very creative -

love ur review and ur photos. We are a little shy of 11 months to sailing

on the Silhouette looking forward to it.

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[tweetylori]

that is a great photo! (the guest relations one) very creative -

love ur review and ur photos. We are a little shy of 11 months to sailing

on the Silhouette looking forward to it.

 

Thank you CrusieToy! I found myself taking pics of even ordinary type things just because I didn't want to forget ANY of this amazing adventure! Hope yours is just as wonderful!

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When we (mostly I) were in the planning stages for this trip, I kept asking Husband to research what he wanted to see and do everywhere we were going. The ONLY request he came back with was to go to the oldest magic shop in Rome. He is a huge fan of magic, and we somewhat easily managed to find it! I do believe this made his night as much (or more) than Trevi Fountain and the Pantheon.

 

Ecletica:

 

 

We spent quite some time in this shop. Husband was thrilled. Made me happy to see him so happy! :)

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After spending a considerable amount of time talking magic, we headed back in the direction of the hotel. Passing cool sights like this:

 

 

And oh, the Presidential Palace just happened to be near our hotel as well! :eek:

 

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Wanting bottled water for our room, we stopped here:

 

 

Back to our home-sweet-away-from-home-home!

 

 

And well, maybe a couple little tarts went back with us along with the water :o

 

[Chris]

Lori

Thank you for the review. Can you tell me who the house band was? We will be on in February. We sailed I an aft cabin on the Silly two years ago and really enjoyed it. I loved your photos and wit.

 

Chris

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Lori

Thank you for the review. Can you tell me who the house band was? We will be on in February. We sailed I an aft cabin on the Silly two years ago and really enjoyed it. I loved your photos and wit.

 

Chris

 

Hi Chris! Thank you! The House Band was Casablanca. Also Meeting Street played a lot as well. We appreciated all of the live music on board!

[tweetylori]

By golly I am going to finish this tonight! :p So back to November 3rd & 4th:

 

After a solid night's sleep on our super comfy bed (we were going to miss that bed once we got on the ship...never did get used to the hard one there!) we headed out for our one and only full day in Rome!

 

I would say that I agonized over what we would do on this day, but honestly this was the first and easiest decision we (okay I, but with approval from Husband) made regarding tours in Italy. I had waited all my life to get a taste of Italy, and by golly I wanted to experience a less-touristy taste of it.

 

It didn't take me long to find Eating Italy which has several different walking food tours. All with excellent reviews. Sooooo...WHICH one? Trastevere? Testaccio? Night or Day? Husband helped this decision in that he didn't want to do a night one, so the daytime Testaccio one it was!

 

 

EVENT DETAILS

The Taste of Testaccio Food Tour

Date: Nov 04, 2016 10:30am - 2:30pm

 

YOUR RECEIPT DETAILS

2 x The Taste of Testaccio Food Tour - Adult (75€) (83.25 USD ea.) 166.50 USD

Amount: 166.50 USD

Fees: 2.50 USD

Taxes: 0.00 USD

Total: 169.00 USD

 

I was so excited about this that this was purchased on March 26 at 6:25pm according to my confirmation email. Note that the euro to dollar ratio wasn't quite as good as it was closer to our adventure. But it was super nice to have this paid for way in advance.

 

I also learned that I should have used a different credit card, as I have a Visa that doesn't charge foreign transaction fees. Took some investigating to find out, but once I had enough sense to learn which one didn't, I was smart enough to only use that one on the trip. ;)

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So we were supposed to meet 15 minutes ahead of time for our food tour. I had asked our Hostess at the hotel the day before what time we should leave for it, and she said an hour. Well that seemed a bit silly to me as I had google-mapped the distance in advance and it seemed more in the 20 minute range, so we compromised at 45. (should have listened to her, but she didn't say why!)

 

There were taxi stand very close to the hotel, so we compromised and headed out around 9:30, giving us a good 45 minutes. But yikes! The streets were crowded with bumper to bumper traffic. It was a Friday morning, and it was seriously nuts, but we didn't know what was normal. Even finding a cab took some harder looking than we expected.

 

Found a driver and hopped in, but when we told him we were going to Testaccio, he looked shell-shocked. But started taking us. Slowly we inched along in the awful traffic. Somehow we managed to discern that there was some kind of observance going on in town. But we still don't know exactly what it was. Anyone know? :confused:

 

What we did know was that it took us a good hour to get to the meeting location for the food tour, but unfortunately the food tour had had to start without us. I was in contact via email, and was told where the first stop was, but the taxi driver refused to take us anywhere other than the original location request. He was not happy with the traffic, that's for sure! Well, neither were we, but at least we were kind enough to tip him generously for his troubles. (he did perk up at that)

 

So here we were, dropped off on a street in what we assumed was in Testaccio, with only an address of where we needed to join our tour. :confused:

 

Fortunately we ran into an incredibly kind woman. I showed her the address on my phone. She started pointing, then waved to us to follow her. Sure enough, she led us right where we needed to be! How KIND! :D

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With a huge sigh of relief we found our small tour group comprised of our Guide, a Mother & Son from Australia, and a Gentleman from Britain who had saved us some of the salami, cheeses and balsamic on this first stop.

 

 

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Which led to the next stop that appeared to be a store attached to this restaurant. What a fabulous store!

 

 

 

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The food treasures in this store are amazing! This Shop Owner proudly shared tastes of the most amazing balsamics as well as incredible truffle oil:

 

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Vowing to come back to purchase some balsamic and oils, we started walking and ended up at a pizzeria.

 

 

But we didn't have pizza. We had savory fried zucchini & broccoli, along with sweet cinnamon-sugar apples

 

 

These were delicious but our tour had only just begun and I had to pace myself, plus I'm not used to eating a lot of fried foods, so I only ate some of mine.

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On to the next stop we headed, passing by this tempting bakery:

 

 

 

But we behaved and kept walking:

 

 

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So where do we end up next? At what is kinda like an Italian Subway.

 

 

 

Note the fresh bread coming out of the side where there was an awesome oven and a Gentleman baking who looked like he wasn't sure why I would be so interested in fresh baked bread that looked this amazing!

 

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Desserts too (although we didn't try any)

 

 

So what did we get to taste?

 

A porchetta sandwich on that beautiful fresh bread, with lots of sundried tomatoes!

 

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So what was up next on our walking food tour of Testaccio?

 

Ding Ding Ding...you guessed it! A cemetery/cat sanctuary! ;)

 

 

 

 

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Now to some this might seem a strange stop for a food tour, but we were glad for the food reprieve, and very happy to hear the history that we heard. It involved Keats who is buried here, but didn't want his name on his tombstone, so his friend who died later asked to be buried next to him and included his name:

 

 

Also included this pyramid that is attached to Rome's wall:

 

 

The story with the pyramid is that the guy that had it built had gone to Egypt and liked the pyramids, so he wanted to have one built to be entombed in in Rome. But sadly for him, after he died they discovered he had no money to pay for the pyramid, so they tossed his body in the river and kept the pyramid. :p Cool for all of us to see. So sorry for him :cool:

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On the way out of the cemetery, we stopped to hear about Terra Cotta...which is very important to the building of Testaccio

 

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By now it had been a good twenty minutes or so since we had eaten anything :eek:

 

Fortunately our next stop was not too far away :p

 

How exciting to walk into a wonderful Italian market!

 

 

According to our guide it had only recently moved all indoors

 

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