Travel day for Holy Lands Cruise

I started writing this post early and will finish later.  It's currently Tuesday morning at 8:00 am.  Mary and I are waiting in the Rome airport for our bus to head to the Celebrity Constellation.


 Our fights were OK, with a late departure from Detroit due to a traffic hold, and an early arrival in Rome due to good tail winds.  Mary got some nice pictures of Manhattan and the Statue of Liberty as we landed at Newark.
Upon arriving in Rome I got an email from Celebrity that as of 10:30 pm yesterday our ship was at a port about 200 miles away and unable to leave due to high winds, so it’s arrival is delayed as is our boarding time.  (We found out this evening that it actually hit a Costa ship after breaking its moorings!)  On the plus side, this means our bus trip to the port will include a longer sightseeing tour!  Mary and I both feel bad about the people disembarking today as this may upset their travel plans.  We have another hour to wait since our tour person will be here at 9:00 am to get us on our busses.  More to come from our tour and eventual arrival at our cruise ship!

Update at 8 pm:

Well our day got even more interesting. Due to the late arrival of our ship, our EO tour guide gave us 3 hours of free time to wander around the Vatican.  Since we had to buy lunch and the line to get into get in St. Peter's Basilica was 2 hours long so that was not an option, that left us with little to do except visit the souvenir shops and walk around St Peter's Square (click picture to enlarge it). We met our tour guide at 2:30 pm, walked to our bus, and headed for the ship at Civitavecchia.  I was able to sleep for over an hour on the bus ride, which helped a lot.  When we arrived at the port at 4:30, we were issued a boarding number, ushered into an unheated building, and each given a bottle of water and a package of plain saltine crackers.  Reportedly our ship did not arrive until 3pm so they were taking passengers off while embarking new ones!  After a short wait our number was called and we were able to board the ship. At least our room was ready when we got on board.

After unpacking our carry-ons we headed for the buffet for dinner.  Next up is a muster drill at 8:15, followed by a meeting of our tour group at 9:00 and sail away at 10:00. Since we've had very little sleep since 7:30AM Detroit time yesterday I think we might miss the sail away party.
More to come about the ship tomorrow as we have a sea day and being a cruise line that's new to us, are just starting to learn where things are.