Sapphire Waters, Grand City Walls

Sunday, July 21, 2019
Sorrento, Italy

Saturday afternoon, while I was regaling Judy with my adventures on Mt. Etna, we looked at the details of the excursion we had signed up for on Sunday. To be truthful, we were a little weary at this point in the trip, and the updated description of a hovercraft trip to Capri didn’t have the appeal it had when we were back at home. And it was expected to be a 7 1/2 hour  day trip. That, and the descriptions of the crowds we could expect, helped us make a decision: we canceled that outing.

We could have signed up for one of the other offerings for the day, but spending a day in Sorrento didn’t sound much better. We ended up staying on board instead of leaving the ship at all. It was the first time we had to just visit different places on the ship since our first day, a week before. We spent some of that time together, some doing different things, and I even got a good bit of laundry done. We both enjoyed watching some of the very large yachts near us, especially one that seemed to be having some engine problems. Karma, probably. The changing light on the cliffs of Sorrento made for some interesting photo ops, and being able to see Vesuvius from the ship was a reminder that Mt. Etna wasn’t the only fiery mountain around us. The most compelling moment came when we watched the crew hoist one of the tenders into place on the Voyager. they were working just below our balcony, and it provided a good thirty-minute live show for us. Those tenders double as lifeboats, and even though we were at the end of our stay on the Voyager, it was reassuring to see how they were handled. 

Eventually we had to pack, go to dinner, and put our bags out in the passageway. The next morning we would leave the ship for another hotel night before heading home.

Monday, July 22, 2019
Rome, Italy

Regent does a really nice job of making both embarkation and debarkation pretty painless overall. We went to the theatre, got our ticker numbers, and without too much delay boarded a tour bus for the ride into the heart of Rome. It’s always the case with this kind of transfer that we had to vacate the cabin on the ship before our hotel room would be ready, even after a long bus ride. The staff at the Monti Palace Hotel was very accommodating, though, so the wait wasn’t terrible before we were able to leave the lobby and get into our room. In fact, though they had advertised our rooms as being available at 2:00 PM, we were actually in the room well before noon.

The location of the hotel was really great. We were on Via Cavour, just about halfway between the Colosseum and Santa Maria Maggiore. In fact, Jan Cordell had booked us into another hotel not far away from us when we were in Rome in 2001. At least we knew where we were. After we settled in for just a few minutes, we headed out of the hotel, turned left, and walked uphill to the Church of Saint Mary Major. Before we went in to look around again, we did stop for lunch, and just picked a place sort of at random. Lunch couldn’t have been better. We were seated in an open window, with a view of the square and the facade of the church, the food was good, and the house wine was actually good. 

After lunch we did go in the church, but things had been a little different the last time we were there. This time our bags were X-rayed, and we had to go through a metal detector like the ones at airports. The good part came from not seeing so many crowds. Just five years ago, when we were in rome with the whole family, we had been dismayed to see how many people were around. Everywhere. The crowds were all around us, even in St. Peter’s and the Vatican Museums. There were times there it was difficult to even move through the press of people. This church wasn’t like that. Yes, there were tourists, but not a lot of them. There was a mass in one of the side chapels, and it looked like people were being respectful and not just barging in a snapping photographs at every turn. It’s a remarkable building with a lot of history visible in it components, but it doesn’t show up on everybody’s favorite places to visit in Rome. There’s a lesson there. 

We went back to the hotel, but stopped along the way to walk through the Meta supermarket across the street from the hotel. We bought enough snacks to eat for supper in the room, rested a bit (i.e., napped), before I headed out again to go to another church. It was like I needed a church fix, after being around so many churches in Venice but not going into one. We were close to St. Peter in Chains, and I remembered the really striking organ case, so I headed out on my own. The street had recently been repaved but the crosswalks not yet painted, so I walked an extra block before I crossed at a light. And there was the Colosseum in front of me. Nothing would do but that I walk uphill far enough to get some good photos. After staring a little, dodging a few clumps of tourists, even on the hill above their goal of the moment, I managed to walk to St. Peter’s and get inside.

Wow. This time there no at all crowds in the church, nor was there was there any security to deal with. I simply climbed the steps and walked right in, just the way visiting a church ought to be. (To quote an old friend, “in my humble opinion, which I respect very highly.”) I really  like this place. It’s almost part of the University Engineering Department, it’s so close, and that might explain the lack of crowds. But that church houses not only a lovely gilded organ case, not only a reliquary containing St. Peter’s chains (in a lighted niche for all to see), but also Michelangelo’s Moses! One of his masterworks, right there for any flatlander from Possum Bend to see. Wow. That was worth walking in the 95-degree heat to see again. 

And there were no crowds, only a few people standing there looking at the sculpture and feeding coins into a slot to pay for the lighting. Crazy. (By the way, the lighting made for annoying color differences between Moses and the surrounding marble, so I converted the photo to black & white. Unfortunately I saved it that way permanently, losing the original shot. Phooey.)

Anyway. I went back to the hotel, we snacked, we went up to the rooftop bar, and we had a nice quiet evening. We spent some time talking with another couple from the Voyager, one who had been on the Mt. Etna excursion two days before. They were from Naples, Florida, and we had a good time swapping travel stories, especially theirs about missing flights on the way to the cruise we had just been on. Their struggle, with an elderly mother, made ours with delayed flights in Houston seem pretty bland. 

The next morning, we hit the breakfast buffer, loaded into a van, made it through first one airport then another, and were picked up by Mark just about the time we reclaimed our luggage. Home again, we petted the cats, sat in our chairs a minute, and slept in our own bed. Glad to have made the trip, but even happier to be home.