Rhonda Bracey: At Random

And with that, our 14-day cruise of the western Mediterranean was all over.

We disembarked the ship in Civitavecchia just after 8am, collected our luggage and piled into the car we’d booked that took us to Rome. There we met up with two of my sister’s three kids at the accommodation in the Trastevere area near the Tiber River that her son had hurriedly booked late yesterday while waiting at baggage claim.

And then the walking started…. first to the Colosseum where we found out that we couldn’t buy tickets immediately (the first available were at 3pm, in the heat of the day… and it was HOT), then to some backstreets to find somewhere to eat, then later back to the Colosseum.

We caught an air-conditioned cab back to the apartment, where the forethought of my sister to turn on the air conditioning before we left, meant that the house was lovely and cool. We wandered around the Trastevere area for a while in the early evening, then grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant.

Nearly 16,000 steps in the heat was enough!

Three other big ships also docking early in the morning at Civitavecchia; the one on the right is the Queen Victoria, which also left Civitavecchia the same day and time we did

Hidden behind this graffiti and up a very steep, dark, and wonky set of concrete steps was our lovely apartment. Never judge a book by its cover!

Typical street in Trastevere in the daytime. At night, this was filled with people on tables and chairs sitting outside restaurants and cafes that were hidden behind steel roller doors during the day

Our apartment was a street away from the Tiber

At night, the booths lining the Tiber containing shops, bars, restaurants and cafes came alive with light and hundreds of people — such an ordinary sight during the day, when everything was closed

The Colosseum

Inside the Colosseum

A piazza in the Trastevere area of Rome, filled with cafes, bars and restaurants, and LOTS of people