Rome continued...

After that long ride from port to Rome we arrived in a parking garage that was just a short walk from the Vatican. We took a short break in a store that had some touristy things and bathrooms. Some people also had to buy scarves because they didn't have anything to cover their shoulders. After that we were on our way into Saint Peter's Basilica. It was a Jubilee year so it was expected to be very busy. We waited in line with other groups to go through security but we only waited about 10 minutes.

Facing St Peters
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Facing the opposite direction
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St Peters again
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I loved these pillars on the way into St Peters.
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The pillars again.
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If you look closely you can see one of the Swiss Guards.
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This next one is from in front of the basilica, facing towards the street we were just on. They had a lot of chairs set up because the Pope was going to be there a day or two after we were there.
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Next up, inside St Peters Basilica.
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I loved all the details on the ceiling.
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Rome continued...

Saint Peters Basilica and the Vatican were very impressive. Afterwards we got back into the bus to go over to the Colosseum. The following pictures are from the bus ride there. The First two are from where Julius Caesar was assassinated.
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Rome continued...
Colosseum...
I'll be honest this next part was not my favorite. This was in no means Disney's or the tour companies fault. We just didn't feel safe here. It was so busy and I was worried every 5 seconds someone was going to run up an jack my stuff. I've heard lots of reports of pickpockets in the area and even our guide was telling us to watch out. The whole area was so crowded with tourists and people hacking and the like. There were also a lot of Gypsies. They have a lot of tricks and a lot of times they will try to touch you... I know to never take anything from them, even if they put it on you. And all around the Colosseum they were nothing people. So we just couldn't enjoy ourselves and were really annoyed.
Anyway here are some pictures. The tour didn't go inside the Colosseum, just the outside. We were there for about 30 minutes, which as you can probably tell by that last paragraph was plenty for DH and I.
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It might sound weird but I really loved all the trees in the area.
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They had just recently finished a cleaning project of the Colosseum, which I thought was pretty neat because to me it looked a lot different than in pictures I've seen. In most pictures it looks more grey and in person it wasn't.
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They were still doing work to uncover other ancient sites in the area around the Colosseum. We wandered up a little road.
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Looking back down the road...
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After waiting for the rest of the group we headed back towards the bus. Thought this aqueduct was cool. As you can notice the little green puff on the stick, that's our tour guide lol. I have a lot of pictures with that puff. I've come to appreciate the puff, it never led us astray.
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Next up we were back on the bus and on our way to Piazza Navona for lunch. Here is a picture of what used to be the Circus Maximus in the foreground (where they held ancient chariot races) with Palatine Hill in the background. I think if I go back to Rome I will want to visit Palatine Hill in more detail.
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Rome continued...

After a short bus ride we got off and had a short little walk to Piazza Navona. It was getting really hot out, I think it was 90 degrees that day. This was to be our lunch stop and our time to shop.
Our guide stopped and showed us where the sign to Piazza Navona was.
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Here is the sign...next to a Pinocchio store.
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See it up there on the wall? I should have took one a little closer...
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I am so impatient and it was so busy that all of my pictures always have some random people in them... Oh well...

Up next! FOOD!!!

We were hungry and wanted to try out some Italian pizza. We decided to stop at Tre Scalini, which ended up being an EXCELLENT choice! We ordered some shaken iced coffees which were served in martini glasses, and to this day, it remains the best coffee I've ever had. It was so refreshing because it was so hot and the coffee was just so darn good! Highly recommend.
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Here is my view during lunch.
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For pizza we got prosciutto pizza. The picture doesn't do it justice, it was excellent.
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And for dessert we got the famous Tartufo, which is an ice cream truffle. It was so rich, DH ate most of it because I was so full. This one is definitely for chocolate lovers.
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After lunch we wandered around the square to get some pictures and some souvenirs. One thing we bought was a little Pinocchio ornament for our tree.
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Next up we go back on the bus to go over to the Pantheon!
 
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Rome continued...

After another bus ride we were walking to the Pantheon.
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Here it is! The square around it was beautiful and ancient!
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It astonishes me it was built so long ago! 128AD.
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Walking inside...
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That green tour guide puff...
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Inside
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Outside to the left...
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After the Pantheon we started our walk to the Trevi Fountain.
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Inside some mall type thing
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After a bit of a walk we arrived at the Trevi Fountain. It was so hot, especially there, since it was so crowded and there was no breeze getting through at all. The fountain was beautiful but I was a bit dissapointed that they let people up so close, there were hundreds of people just sitting on it and guards would come around every once and a while and tell people to get off and they would just immediately get right back on it. My friend was just there this November and they had the whole front part blocked off, I feel like they should do that all the time, it makes much better opportunities to get a good picture and prevents people from sitting on something so amazing.
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We stayed in this area for a while before starting our last walk back to the bus (which is parked in a different spot so we got a nice walking tour back).
 
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How many people were in your group and how does that work with the guide and the green puff? :) Does he just leave someone if they get distracted and don't keep up?

Loving all the pictures! :)
 
Rome continued...

So we had quite a walk left, which was great with us. We didn't want the tour to be over and we got the opportunity to see and learn about more things.
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Walking in front of Altare della Patria, very beautiful.
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The "Mussolini balcony"
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Ancient apartment buildings
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The front of the ancient Roman apartment buildings.
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This was a theatre.
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Then it was over. Our wonderful day in Rome was coming to an end...Almost. It was only about 4 pm. Back on the bus for the long boring ride back to port. I took advantage of this time to get in a long nap. Up next...some Frozen night.
 
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How many people were in your group and how does that work with the guide and the green puff? :) Does he just leave someone if they get distracted and don't keep up?

Loving all the pictures! :)
Everyone was keeping up just fine. We did lose someone for about 10 minutes at some point, and we had two guides so one stayed behind to meet them. There were about 25 or so people, so not too large a group, not too small. We had meeting times for everything. And we also all had little speakers that the guides would talk into so we could hear them even if we couldn't see them.
 
Day 5 Rome...

After we arrived back on our boat they made an announcement that anyone with an early seating could come to the main dining rooms up until it was time for second seating. I thought that was very considerate since Rome was such an long port day. We got back to our room and our bed was already made up and we decided some gear (a snowflake necklace) for tonights' Frozen night.

There was no show in the theatre tonight, instead they showed Finding Dory. I really wanted to see it but we got back too late and I missed the beginning.
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I went up to play Anna's Chocolate Chase while DH hung out in the room, or something...I don't really know what he did. So I went and got myself a drink of the day and started hunting down these clues. I was pretty good with finding the location, but once there a little girl had to help me because I didn't know what I was looking for. After that I went on my way and finally finished.

The dinner was Frozen themed. Our waitress, Marista, said that most guests do not like the menu. We thought it was great, one of the bests from that week. It made us venture out and try things we normally wouldn't, and we enjoyed them. We were in Lumiere's for dinner tonight. For an appetizer I got Elsa's Coronation Scallops, they were AMAZING!
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I got the mushroom soup and Anna's honey mustard marinated salmon. Here is a picture of mostly eaten salmon.
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For dessert I got the Sweet Temptation. It was very very good! Especially that pancake thing on the right.
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We didn't go to any of the planned Frozen activities but we did go to Majority Rules after dinner. Hahah all my notes say on that is we did awful! Here is a picture of us waiting for it to start. A drink of the day and something else.
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Navigator for tomorrow
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awww, so lovely to see the photos of Rome. I loved it there and its a place I plan to go back and spend a few days. Interesting that you didnt feel safe around the Collesium, I went there on my own and felt fine. The tour I did we walked most places, but we were there for 2 days so we had more time.

If anyone has read the Dan Brown book or watched the Tom Hanks movie Angels and Demons, that fountain in Piazza Navona is the Bernini Fountain, where one of the Cardinals is killed, the Water Ami-gram Illuminti Symbol.
 
Day 6, Livorno

On this day we slept in a little. Then after waking up around 8 we got ready and went over to Cabanas for breakfast. We didn't have any plans for today so we just got off the ship.

In Livorno you have to take a bus out of port to get to the town. So we boarded a bus and went into town, the scenery was pretty dumpy until we got into town. Livorno was quite pretty. After arriving in Livorno we stuck our heads in a few stores and looked at a few things. Nothing crazy. We didn't buy anything.

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For some reason Dh and I were pretty grumpy, so we decided to just go back onto the ship. We were already dreading our cruise being over even though we were right in the middle of it! We got back to the ship and stopped into Cove Cafe to get some caffeine. DH got a mocha and I got an iced mocha with an extra shot of espresso.
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We were hungry again, and it was nearing lunch time. We decided to switch it up and go to Lumiere's for lunch. For my lunch I got some sort of ravioli soup, tortilla soup and a capreese salad. Dh got some other things but also got the tortilla soup. The tortilla soup came with the most amazing tortilla chips we have ever had. They servers even brought us more! They were handmade. SO good.
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Lunch was amazing! I wish we had time to dine here every day. We enjoyed all of our food very much on this cruise. Everything we had was very fresh and flavorful. Before we left lunch our server gave me a little paper flower.
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Tonight Tangled would be playing in the theater DH and I wanted to play Catch a Thug. It's where they put pictures of the Thugs from Tangled all over the ship in different spots and give you clues and you have to catch them. Some were pretty hard to find. So off we went around the ship to catch them.

Afterwards Dh went on the slides and to the pool while I relaxed in the room watching Beauty and the Beast (my favorite!). I went to play some ship games wheel DH napped. We checked out the decorated Snuggly Duckling (they turned O'Gills into the Snuggly Duckling). It was pretty cool in there.

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Before dinner we tried to go into the Snuggly Ducking takeover but there were so many people in there that it was just too crowded for us. So we went to wait in the theatre for the start of Tangled. Tangled was my favorite show on the ship! I loved it. It was a real quality show. I even had tears in my eyes at one point. I cannot wait to see it again in June when we are back on the Magic.

After the show it was dinner time. Tonight we were in Animators Palette. Tonight is the night of the animation show so everyone gets the same appetizer. For dinner I had lobster ravioli and DH had steak. The show was just the cutest. It is so neat how they make your character dance on screen with everyone else's and with the different Disney characters. I don't have any pictures of the show because I was too enthralled to take any (sorry). But I do have pictures of our characters.

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My character is the cat with the collared shirt, DH's is the one with the little Pinocchio shoes.
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After Dinner we stopped in our room to drop off our drawings. We saw our little towel animal of the night, a lobster (I think).
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After stopping by the room we went to Fathoms to see the adult show of String Fever. They are a strings quartet and were very talented. DH and I love violins and the like and thought this show was outstanding. We saw that they would be performing at some point on our first days navigator and were looking forward to them ever since. They didn't disappoint. After seeing them perform we went to bed and watched some Monsters INC until we fell asleep.
Up Next... Villefranche...or so we think...
 
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Day 7...Surprise Day at Sea!

So today is the day it got quite interesting... Late in the night the Magic was really rocking. We had hit some rough seas, so rough that they woke both me and DH up. Had a lot of trouble sleeping this night. Dh had looked out the portholes and at one point and the water was coming all the way up to there! Finally we fell back asleep. Our plans for the morning were to get ready and try to make our way over to Nice to explore.

When we woke up I noticed that we were not tendering yet... Villefranche is a tender port. So we got up and dressed and were wandering around the ship. While on our way to get breakfast we heard an announcement that they are having issues with the tenders and will be working on it. A while after that there was another announcement stating that there would be no tendering and we would not be able to go ashore since the seas were too rough and it was too dangerous to tender. So today would be a surprise day at sea! Disney stated that they would be working on getting us to another port instead. The ship stayed in the area for a while.

Here are some of the pictures I got while we were in the area close to shore.
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A lot of people were dissapointed about it, but there was something really exciting about a surprise day at sea, at least for me. We went and saw Pete's Dragon, they decided to show it in the Walt Disney Theatre. It was a really cute movie.

After that we went up to get some lunch. I got a gyro. This was my first time trying them on any ship and they were my new favorite. And DH got some chicken fingers. They were pretty good too!
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They made another announcement to the ship, they said that tomorrow we would be going to Marseilles. Afterwards we stopped back into the room for something, and I am really glad we did because we had a message on our phone. It was from the wine and beverage team saying that our chocolate and liquor tasting was now scheduled for today instead of tomorrow! They give us the option to cancel but we kept it because we were really excited for it. So off we went to try some chocolate and Liquor!
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Here are all the bottles we got to try. The one I missed taking the picture of was a pink Moet and Chandon. All the pairings were spectacular. First up was the champagne and melted milk chocolate. Then a red wine and parmesan cheese. After that was a port and melted dark chocolate. This was an eye opener for DH and I because we never had port before and we really enjoyed it. Lastly was a whisky and melted white chocolate, this one was a little more difficult. I love whisky mixed drinks but when they are straight or on the rocks they are difficult for me to drink. I kind of just shot it. Also since some people didn't show up to the tasting, a lot of us got an extra drink since they were already poured. I got an extra port and some more champagne. DH got an extra port.

This was a very enjoyable experience. DH doesnt usually enjoy wines but on this cruise he was branching out and trying some. He really liked the port and the red wine at this tasting. Yes it's winning him over. He even said that next cruise he will go to the wine tasting with me!

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We were feeling a wee bit tipsy at this point. We went and saw String Fever, who had a surprise day at sea show for everyone. That one was just as good as the first. We also took a nap and relaxed. Overall it was a great sea day and Disney did a lot to make up for missing a port day, in my opinion. There were a lot of activities on the ship and they even got us to be able to go to a new port tomorrow. They did a lot of work and had some new excursions you could book as well.

For dinner tonight we were in Cariocas. I don't really remember what this appetizer is, but there is some cheese and prochuitto on there.
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For my main course there were two things that I really wanted to try, so I got both! The lobster tail and the chicken parmesan.
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Both were quite wonderful! I am still thinking of the chicken as I type.
For dessert I got this little chocolate ball thing.
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We went up to see the pirate show fireworks and see pirate Mickey save the day. I actually liked this version better than when Jack Sparrow comes down. It's just cuter with Mickey!

We went on to bed soon after. This little guy was waiting in our room. He actually scared DH!
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Up next... Marseilles!
 
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Loving your trip report! It is so helpful in planning our trip in August 2017. Trying to decide on the tour you did in Rome through DCL or Can't Be Missed tours.

Did the Imperial tour include the Museums and Sistine Chapel on your way into St Peters Basilica? Were you able to see the Spanish Stairs?

Leaning towards the DCL tour just for peace of mind...but would really like to see those two sites as well.
 
Loving your trip report! It is so helpful in planning our trip in August 2017. Trying to decide on the tour you did in Rome through DCL or Can't Be Missed tours.

Did the Imperial tour include the Museums and Sistine Chapel on your way into St Peters Basilica? Were you able to see the Spanish Stairs?

Leaning towards the DCL tour just for peace of mind...but would really like to see those two sites as well.

We did not go inside the Sistine Chapel, but I know Disney offers another tour that does that. I do not know if the tour I was on would have went to the Spanish Stairs since they were under construction when we went. The Disney tour was great though.
 
Ugh, Im still deciding between the tour you took (Imperial & Renaissance) or the Highlights of Rome tour since there's 2 hrs starting at Piazzo del Popolo and we can walk to every stop we have on our list and back in 48 minutes (not including time to take pics so that gives us an hour of pic time). Same price but too many DCL choices for Rome. We were planning on DIY at all our ports but this port is just too far from rome for my comfort. Plus we are leaving our youngest on board while in Rome as it will just be too much for her to go all day long. I'm so enjoying your TR though as we go in Sept 2017!!!
 
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Ugh, Im still deciding between the tour you took (Imperial & Renaissance) or the Highlights of Rome tour since there's 2 hrs starting at Piazzo del Popolo and we can walk to every stop we have on our list and back in 48 minutes (not including time to take pics so that gives us an hour of pic time). Same price but too many DCL choices for Rome. We were planning on DIY at all our ports but this port is just too far from rome for my comfort. Plus we are leaving our youngest on board while in Rome as it will just be too much for her to go all day long. I'm so enjoying your TR though as we go in Sept 2017!!!
I really did like this one but Disney does have a ton to choose from at this port. And i'm with you on that, we were going to do it on our own but then I saw how far it was from the port. We would never have been able to enjoy ourselves if we didn't go with Disney on this one.
 
I found your trippie :cool1:

I love your photos, so beautiful! And I spied your backpack :goodvibes I hope mine lasts because it's been my favourite backpack ever!

Wow, so many ports! I would love to do this cruise one day but with a crabby, complainy 10-year old, I don't think it would not be a good idea. :rolleyes2

Funny about your hubby getting called out for his non-dancing :p

Looking forward to the rest popcorn::
 
I found your trippie :cool1:

I love your photos, so beautiful! And I spied your backpack :goodvibes I hope mine lasts because it's been my favourite backpack ever!

Wow, so many ports! I would love to do this cruise one day but with a crabby, complainy 10-year old, I don't think it would not be a good idea. :rolleyes2

Funny about your hubby getting called out for his non-dancing :p

Looking forward to the rest popcorn::
Thank you! OH that backpack, it is pretty durable. Mine is starting to pull apart at the strap, but I used it for a very big and long move to a different country and it was jam-packed with a lot of weight and it is still holding up! I also use it every day for work. I cannot wait to read the rest of your report. :yay:
 

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