Super Sunday

Today, Sunday, April 19th, was the end of the transatlantic cruise and the start of the Greek Isles cruise. Since we are staying on board and in the same cabin we got to get off the ship and do our own thing. Most of the people (less adventuresome than us) stayed in the small port town of Civitavecchia. We, on the other hand, took off for a day in Rome.

The train station is about 15 minutes away. We walked there and bought our round trip ticket to Roma Termini which is the main train station in Rome. Around the Termini station are 3 sights we wanted to see; the National Museum of Rome, the Baths of Diocletian and Santa Maria Maggiore (a church listed in The 1000 Places to See before You Die).

We headed out first for the church since it was farthest away from the train station. We weren’t disappointed at all. It is absolutely exquisite. Since it was Sunday worshippers were gathering for the 10:00am Mass. Although tourists are walking around in the church, the service continues on. We try to be respectful and while listening to the prelude of organ music everyone stood up as the Catholic hierarchy entered in. I think we had some very official people there. It was a very lovely experience which both of us enjoyed very much. After they walked by us we quietly left and were very glad that we got to see the church and got to see the start of the Mass. One of the relics that this Church lays claim to are sticks from Jesus’ manger. Since service was going on we didn’t get to walk up to the pulpit area where the relics were. We will just have to take their word on it.

After that we took off for the National Museum of Rome which tells a great history of Rome. We saw busts of Caesar, Augustus, Nero, etc. and statues of all the famous people of early Rome and mosaics from villas from early 2nd century. Look how tiny the little tiles were. I can’t believe they could cut them so tiny and they created such beautiful artwork with it.

From there we went across the street (well it was a huge Plaza that we had to cross which had traffic going in every direction) to the Baths of Diocletian, the granddaddy of all the Roman Baths. The 32,000 gallon bathing pool cleaned all of Rome in 300 AD. It was later converted to grand church years ago, Santa Maria degli Angeli. Michelangelo helped design part of it. There retained much of the artwork and many original columns still stand there. It was beautiful. The highlight of the Bath was a live, organ concert by a local organist. He played something from Vivaldi and the sounds of the organ filled the area. It was WONDERFUL! Today I got to hear 2 organ concerts in 2 different churches.

By now it is starting to rain and we decide to head back to the Train Station and check out our return trip. We didn’t want to get stranded and didn’t want to get soaked either so we made a beeline for the Train Station. We found a nice place to eat a Panini, rested our legs and found an express train to take us the 50 minutes back to Civitavecchia. What we didn’t know was we bought a ticket for the slow train so when the ticket guy came by he charged us another 8 euro for our ride. We paid 13 euros per person for a roundtrip to Rome. Cabs and the ship shuttle were charging 150 euro for cab and 90 euro per person for shuttle. Hmmmmmm. Guess how we will get to Rome in 10 days when this next cruise finishes????? 13 euros versus 150 euros. Print this post