WEATHER: Tops 25C – Lows 12C
HIGHTLIGHT OF THE DAY : Boarding the beautiful MSC Fantasia ( said Fan-ta-see-a )
BUMMER OF THE DAY: Lugging my dead body of a bag around – I told you I am a flashpacker….
BUYS OF THE DAY: Drinks package on the ship. All you can drink wine with lunch and dinner.
WORD OF THE DAY: - always written phonetically – Prego – please in Italiano
We leave the beautiful hotel this morning to catch our train to Civitavecchia, also known as the Port of Rome. Checking out was a little embarrassing – especially since the guy behind the desk was a tall, dark handsome Italian man called Marcelo. I am only transferring money onto my credit card as I need it, so if the card is stolen there is not much on there to take. So I transferred the $$ to cover the cost of the hotel, and like any hotel I have encountered lately, they hold the funds on your card till you check out and then they charge your card when you actually do check-out, so technically they holding double the amount needed till the first authorization is reversed on your card. Normally I would have enough money on the card for this to not be an issue, but there was an issue and poor Marcelo had to tell me that my card was declined! How embarrassment! So I booted up my notebook there and then and had to transfer another lot of money to cover the hotel bill again! Classy look for a 5 star hotel, but the upside is I got to talk to Marcelo a little longer!!
The train station was only a 7 minute walk from the hotel, so all bagged up, we left our lap of luxury and headed for the train for a 10.40am departure. European trains are quite easy to read and understand. When we first got there, the train departure was up, but hadn’t been assigned a platform yet, so with about 30 minutes to wait we decided to sit and have a drink. Well by the time we looked at our watches it was 10.30am, so we had to haul our arses to the platform and of course it was the last one right at the end of the flippin station!!! We made it with a minute to spare! We had pre-paid for our rail ticket before we left Australia and didn’t bother with a reservation as it was a train just going to the port, which was also the end of the line. The train looked just like the ones in Sydney, double decker and nothing fancy but they hoot along with it getting up to 130km at one stage! After a few local stops and 1 hour later we found ourselves at Civitavecchia – definetly this is a great way to get to the port of Rome. The station is walking distance then to the port. You can only go so far – before you have to hop on the shuttle transfer to take you all the way to the ship. MSC offer passengers flexibility on where they decide to start their cruise in the Med. You can hop on at any of the ports they visit on your cruise and then your 7 nights start from that port. So pretty much everyday there are people embarking and disembarking the whole cruise. So in saying that we got to check-in at 12.30pm and we didn’t have to wait at all to hand in our bags. We then zigzag’ed our way through their expo style set up of spa treatment packages, kids club offers and the optional excursion desk to get to the check-in counter to get our ‘magic’ cards for the week and more ship information. The whole process took us not even 15 minutes from arriving at the check-in to getting to our cabin!! Awesome……
Well the ship Fantasia is AMAZING. I have done a lot of cruising, and this ship rates up there with Oasis of the Seas, the largest ( sorry, second largest now by 5mm to her sister ship Allure ). Oasis has 6500 guests – Fantasia has 4000, so size wise I wasn’t expecting her to be so big. She is a new ship in ship terms – going on 2 years now, but I am certain she looks like she did on her maiden voyage. She is so well cared for and there are staff all the time, cleaning and polishing. She is in amazing nick! The ship itself is awesome, with 18 decks, an F1 simulator, a bright pink nightclub called Liquid Bar ( how appropriate ) a waterpark, deck chairs that have little sun roofs on them and with hot Italian staff walking around the decks all the time what else could you ask for.
So we went to the buffet and had lunch and this is where we got to wave our ‘magic’ card and try out for the first time our drinks package. We have paid $22 per day for unlimited beer, wine, water and soft drink for the cruise with lunch and dinner. We figured we only had to have 3 wines with lunch and 3 wines with dinner and we are ahead. Nothing like value for money as incentive to drink right! So we do have a special code on our ship cards and they really do work like magic!! It is like drinking for free, well it feels like it as we also pre-paid this before we left home. Now the beauty of drinking for lunch and dinner is that lunch runs for 4 hours and dinner can take upto 2 hours, so you see where I’m heading with this! We could easily turn this into a booze cruise and knock that value for money right into next week!!! Well because we are responsible drinkers, we will not test the theory ‘every day’ but we will give it a good crack tonight! So after 2 wines with lunch and a third one we took back to the cabin, we were well and truly on our way! Well we are on holidays right!
So after settling in, walking around the ship, getting our photos, booking in our shore tours, getting some housekeeping stuff done eg: splitting the queen beds into singles, bucket of ice and chasing our bottle of champagne it was time to get ready for dinner. We have chosen the late seating for dinner, which I still know is the right thing, but the time for this is 9pm!!! Late for dinner I hear you say! But if you do full day tours your not back to the ship till around 5.30-6.00pm and really don’t want to rush to get ready, so I do always pick the late sittings.
Our bottles of champagne arrived – care of Paul from MSC and not just one – but 2 ( thanks buddy ) just what we need more alcohol, but one can never have too much? Or can you? Anyway we popped that sucker and by this time Melvin, our cabin steward arrives, so we poured him a glass ( worked out to be 2 ) and had a toast to a safe and successful cruise. ChelC was tickled pink that Melvin was from Honduras and she got to practice some broken but passable Spanish on him. It also helps that he is cute!
So by the time we chatted to Melvin, it was time to get ready and head to dinner. We are on a table of 6, with a couple from Melbourne sitting with us and the other 2 seats were MIA we have done okay for dinner companions. Another bottle of wine with dinner and we were good to go for a bit of a boogie at the nightclub. When we actually arrived it was like we had walked into a high school. There were like 100 teenagers all in the nightclub! Keeping in mind this is now 11.30 at night, we possibly looked like grandma’s in there!!! BUT never fear this did not deter us as we pulled up a pew at the bar and continued to drink till the wee hours and somehow, like homing pigeons, make it back to our cabin. We then called room service, and got 2 chicken ceasar salads delivered and ate them drunk as skunks!!! As far as I can remember they were delicious. The only eventful thing was my mobile phone slipped into the ice bucket full of water, but after 5 hours drying out and a little resuscitation it has survived and seems to be working okay!! Close shave…..
We arrive into our first port tomorrow – Genoa, where we have a day tour booked to Portofino. So lets hope for some good weather.
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