My wife and I along with another couple went on the Sept 28 Mediterranean Cruise aboard the Carnival Liberty and boy did we have a great time! It wasn't a relaxing trip since we were always on the go, but nonetheless it was a very exciting one and got to see a lot of beautiful places. I'll break down each port and mention what we did on each port and make some suggestions on where to go and what to do and see. We did not do any excursions on the cruise and I'm glad we didn't as we heard a lot of bad stories from other cruise passengers. The main reason why we chose to do a private tour is 1) much cheaper vs. what the cruise charges and 2) we get to travel a lot easier with 2-6 people versus 60+ people in a bus. This allowed us to hop on and off the van quickly and have more time to see more places.

Thursday Sept 28, 2006 - Civitavecchia (Rome), Italy

We flew out of Washington Dulles around 6:30 PM and arrived in London the next morning. From there we flew directly to Rome which was about a 2 hour flight. Not too bad. Prior to the trip, we arranged for transfer from the airport to the port with Roma Shuttle (www.romashuttle.com). Our driver was waiting patiently for us at the airport when we arrived. The drive from Rome Airport (FCO) to the port of Civitavecchia was about 45 minutes to an hour. Our driver was even kind enough to stop by some local convenience stores so that we could pickup some toiletries (since they were confiscated by the London airport). We arrived on the ship around 3pm. Everything was smooth. It took maybe 10 minutes to actually check in. Once we arrived on the ship, we went straight to the cafeteria area and pigged out as we were pretty hungry from our flights. After checking into our room we just toured the ship and enjoyed our first night of fine dining. Read more