Tom and Noel Cruise Aboard The New Seven Seas Explorer: Civitavecchia and Naples, Italy, April 13 & 14 2017

Civitavecchia is the port city for Rome so it is quite a busy port. Since we had been to Rome several times we decided to take a short tour that started with a visit to Bracciano Lake and a winery. Most of the area we drove through was farming with crops of mostly wheat, olive groves, and artichokes. There were also cattle and sheep and we saw quite a few horses. After about one hour we arrived at the small town of Anguillara located on the shore of Bracciano Lake. The day was quite overcast and hazy so we could not see the other side of the lake. We visited a small fish market where the fish were nicely displayed. Tom had a coffee in a small café, mostly so we could use the restroom! After about 45 minutes we got back on the bus to drive to the winery. It was a small family winery where we tasted a couple of different wines and they served some nice snacks of bread, olives, cheese, etc. We arrived back at our ship at 1 pm and had lunch out on the pool deck. It was pretty quiet around the ship as most passengers had taken all day tours to Rome. All of our trivia team was on board and we finally won!

We counted 22 tour buses lined up for our ship

The winery we visited

Snacks and wine

Small fish market

Mobile fruit and vegetable market

Naples was also quite hazy and cool so we could not see much of Vesuvius or Capri in the distance, just a faint outline. We took a four hour "highlights" tour of the city of Naples. The traffic is horrible and the whole city seems to be under construction. Everyone honks their car horns and cars are double parked everywhere so our bus driver did a great job maneuvering our huge bus through the crowded streets. Most of the tour was just on the bus but we did get out in the old part of the city and walked with the guide to a central square and a couple of churches. We then had about 45 minutes of free time before we went back to the ship. There were hundreds of tiny shops selling everything imaginable. We especially noticed the food shops where all the food items are very enticing and beautifully displayed. We made it back to the ship in time for lunch.