Crystal Serenity – Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy
We started our day with a wonderful breakfast in the Lido Cafe on Deck 12. The buffet was extremely well equipped with items to satisfy anyone’s tastes. We would recommend that you try to sit in the same area as the staff in the Lido were amazing in learning and remembering our names, our seating preferences and our beverages of choice.
As you can see by these pictures, there were a range of items to choose from and the quality of the food was very good. We really enjoyed starting our days here, and would actually look forward to seeing the staff.
After breakfast, we left the ship and took a quick bus that picked us up right in front of the ship to the entrance of the port; it was approximately 5 minutes. If you like, you can also walk to the entrance. We did this on our return from town back to the ship at the end of our day.
Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy is located approximately 47 minutes by train from Rome. There were excursion options with our cruise that included a transfer into Rome for people to visit this iconic city, but having spent 2 days in Rome prior to the cruise, we chose to relax and explore Civitavecchia as we had not been here before.
As you leave the port area after disembarking from the bus, you walk along streets that run parallel to the port and are lined with impressive stone work.
It was nice to see our ship through these arches.
From town, we had a great view of the port with Crystal Serenity sitting in the distance. With Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy being a major cruise ship terminal, it was not surprising to see an abundance of cruise ships docked in the port.
As we made our way through town, we came across the Cattedrale Di San Francesco.
The buildings in Civitavecchia were adorned with beautiful pastel colours that stood out in contrast to the building and homes that you see in a typical North American city. This would become an amazing recurring theme throughout the visits we made in our cruise.
One of the things that we love to do while traveling is to visit supermarkets to explore the local specialties. It was nice to see the members of the crew were provided discounts in many of the shops.
Civitavecchia is a very nice town, but it is definitely a port town and there were not a lot of sites for us to take in. After a few hours, we were ready to walk back to the ship.
Being mid-May, the weather was extremely nice. Even though we were next to the Mediterranean, it was warm and comfortable.
Walking all the way back to the ship was a a great idea as it gave us an opportunity to get our real first look at Crystal Serenity from a distance. We were also able to get a better look at some of the other ships. In total we counted 8 cruise ships in the port, that we saw anyway.
After returning to the ship, we spent a little time by the pool.
Once back in out suite, we had the opportunity to meet our butler who would be indispensable to us throughout our cruise in helping us with a wide variety of arrangements, refreshments and reservations. Every afternoon between 4:30 pm and 5 pm, he would arrive with a treat for us from cut fruits, shrimp platters, ice cream, etc. It also became a tradition throughout the cruise that we would look forward to.
After our snack and taking some time to refresh ourselves, we participated in the mandatory safety drill, Putting on our life jackets we headed to our muster station and were given a presentation on what to do in the very unlikely scenario of an emergency situation on board the ship. This is a mandatory exercise and every cruise line performs this procedure at the start of a new sailing.
After our safety drill, it was time for dinner. With the mandatory safety drill, there was a bit of a mess come dinner time. With early seating being interrupted by the drill and the late seating being delayed by the drill, there was a higher number of people dining in the main dining room on this night than there would be on other nights and seating was quite crowded. The staff did there best to accommodate everyone, and it really did not have an effect on the quality of the food, which was delicious.
We had a fantastic first full day aboard the Crystal Serenity and looked forward to our next port of Livorno (Florence) Italy,
As mentioned earlier, there were shore excursions offered while in Civitavecchia, the available shore excursion were (prices are per person and in USD):
- Panoramic Rome $299
- Etruscan Treasures & the Tarquinia Necropolis $199
- Farmhouse Culinary Experience $339
- Round-trip Motor Coach Transfer to Rome $129
- Rome: All the sights $389
- Gardens of Villa Lante & the Medieval Village of Viterbo $319
- The Ruins of Ostia Antica $189
- The Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter’s Basilica $349
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