Civitavecchia/Departure

We woke up a little before nine so that we could get the free breakfast, which was pretty good I supposed, but at this point I was looking more forward to cruise food so yeah.

Umma, Mia, and I went out to get money from the ATM, but were more or less unsuccessful in doing so. We returned later to try again, but were unsuccessful yet again. This trip out to the ATM made us almost late for the shuttle that came to pick us up from the hotel. We did make it on time, however, and then picked up Nonny, Nonno and Chabba from Nonny and Nonno’s place and then drove towards Civitavecchia. This involved driving up some thin and narrow hills, which was only slightly terrifying. We did make it though!

We got to Civitavecchia, which is where the ship was taking off from, and checked into the ship. With the exception of us thinking we had lost Andrew’s passport and Oppa almost losing his wallet, we actually got through that portion of the cruise experience relatively pain-free and quickly.

We got onto the ship and into our room (with a window!), relaxed for a minute or two, said hi to Uncle Alex & Co. (Nicole is terrified of us) and then went up to eat, which is the most important part of our cruises. After budget eating for almost a month, a big buffet was very exciting.

After filling ourselves up on cruise food, we went back downstairs for a moment, and then went up to do the dumb life jacket exercise. It was hot and unnecessarily long, but it was worth it to play life jacket sumo wrestling with James and to see Chabba accidentally wear a child’s life jacket.

Shortly after that ordeal, we went up to the deck to watch the ship take off and hung out there with Nonny, Nonny and everyone else. Chabba and I tried to sort out what to do at some of the ports of call in all of our seven million guidebooks that we had brought along with us. We eventually went to the fourth floor to sort out the excursions, which worked with the exception of our Mykonos excursion, which had sold out. Even though the line was significantly shorter than it had been earlier in the day, it still took forever to get through the line. By the time we were actually done, it was almost time to get ready for dinner.

Dinner was nice. I ended up getting a tortilla soup, an onion tart, and shrimp ravioli. Very good stuff.

After dinner, Umma Mia and I went to the casino, where we lost about $20 collectively. Mia and I ran up to the card room to see if we could meet with anyone else, but no one was there. We hung out there for a while anyway, working on Sudoku puzzles and the like. Oppa and James eventually joined us. I went down early though because I was getting very tired. I think the rocking of the ship makes me constantly tired on these cruise ships.