Day 24 – May 9 Monday

I woke at 4am to bright lights shining into the cabin, we had docked in Athens & our cruise was over.   I pulled the blinds closed & slept until our alarm at 5.30 before breakfast at 6am.  Back to the cabin before 7am then off to the lounge to wait our disembarkation call.  We said goodbye to all the new friends we made on our trip before disembarking (as it was such a small group & every one so very nice we did become rather close), picking our bags up & getting the cab out to Athens airport, about 45 minutes away.   Our ship was no Queen Mary & luckily no Titanic but where it lacked in grandeur it made up by the friendly staff, if we wouldn’t have been so busy doing all the exciting tour trips I could have picked up some valuable skills such as fruit/vegetable carving, special towel folding, Greek dancing & cooking but alas the cruise was too short & I will just serve my vegies/fruit just thrown on a plate, we will be lucky if the towels will just hang on the towel rack after all this pampering & if Ron will do the cooking I will dance the waltz, Hungarian csardas,  Greek zorba or even the tarantella.  We arrived about two hours before our flight gate was opened so found some free internet & caught up on Facebook, email, paying bills, our blog & even had a brief chat on Skype with Monica & Jackson before our free internet hour finished, (the use of internet is exorbitant at most of the hotels) coinciding with the Alitalia gate opening.  Our flight was uneventful, we both had a snooze on the plane before a bumpy landing in Rome.  Our prearranged car driver was waiting for us & took us directly to our Rome hotel, the Ciccerone right in the heart of the city.  After settling in & looking at the maps we went on a walk around Rome, first to the Spanish Steps, then the Trevi Fountain, (we could just see them through the hordes of tourists, it is so crowded with people) before heading back past the Italian Parliament, then walking along the Via del Corso, past all the big name brand shops to the Piazza del Popolo.  Both the Spanish steps & the Piazza del Popolo have Egyptian obelisks as highlights, plundered by the Romans when they ruled the known world.  We had a lovely pizza for dinner at a small Italian restaurant, sharing a table with a young French & Argentinian couple, working as waiters in Rome.  We managed to find our way back to the hotel easily enough, however, we were constantly being distracted by amazing buildings & churches, everywhere we looked there was something eye-catching & famous.  We were so happy that it’s not too difficult to find our way around.  What a day!!!