We awoke from our lovely family run b&b to a luxurious (well at least by European standards) continental style breakfast before packing, saying good bye to our hosts and Sth African friends and being driven back to Rome airport to commence our slightly convoluted journey to Citavechia Port over an hour away from Rome.
The journey required us to head first in towards Rome on our Regional train with our suitcases jammed in our seats beside us. If a country' s wealth can be determined by the state of its rail line network then Italy is in big trouble with graffitied buildings, weed infested rail lines and tonnes of rusting scrap providing a not so scenic background !
At Trastevere we swapped rail lines to head this time out of Rome on an almost pleasant 50 minute journey of mainly rural scenery before we reached the coast line station of Citivecchia to view our MSC cruise liner the MSC Magnifica in the distance.
If there was a right way of getting to the ship through the port area then we sure as hell didn't take it but after stumbling along with suitcases in tow we finally made our way to the MSC embarkation point where we waited patiently with other passengers until being finally called upon to embark early afternoon. Once on board the priority was to hit the buffet (before the hungry hordes), dump our gear in our well appointed balcony cabin room and go exploring to familiarise ourselves with the ship.
The MSC Magnifica (2010 build) takes approx 2, 500 passengers and is obviously designed for mass tourism but on the positive side (despite mixed reviews) is an oppulently designed ship, has a rage of eating and drinking options and is crewed in general by very friendly (if so not well paid) staff - commonly Eastern Europe, Indonesian, Phillipinos and Cubans (no doubt for their Salsa skilks !)
Cruising is a growing tourist industry and while MSC caters for mainly Italians its budget style prices encourage many different nationalities to come on board as evident by the slightly annoying announcements which are often made in 5-7 different languages.
For the moment with beer (self) and cocktail (Monika) in hand it's just time to sit back relax and watch as our cruise liner silently slipped out of port with the hills behind us on what should be a great 11 day cruise through the Meditereanean to exotic places like Casablanca and Teneriffe- it should be a blast !
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