We took a 7 night Mediterranean cruise with Explora cruise line earlier this month traveling down the coast of Italy and over to Spain. Here’s the first of a series of posts recapping our trip!
We are back from our Mediterranean cruise!!
The trip went great, and I have SO much to share. This week and the next be all travel themed as I recap each of our stops.
This trip was fast travel! Our goal was to see as many cities / places as possible without having to move our suitcase 10 times, and we definitely accomplished that. That said, we got just a taste of our stops, and the next time we travel across the ocean, I’d like to do more slow travel style.
Overall, I absolutely LOVED Explora, and the cruise part was amazing. The boat, food, drinks, setting were all lovely (Thomas, however, is “over cruises” for now). I’m ready to plan a Greek Isle cruise with Explora next! I love the feeling of getting off the ship to explore a place and then coming “home” each evening. You either love or hate cruising, and I love it. It was by far the nicest cruise line I’ve been on.
A big thank you to my sister, Laura Allen, for planning all the details of this trip! She is a travel advisor with Fora and recommended the cruise line. She also recommended and booked our city hotels and helped us make arrangements for drivers. If you’re interested in planning a trip – reach out to her (at no cost to you, as travel advisors are paid on commission from the hotels/cruises)!
Here are the blog posts coming:
- Travel day + Rome
- Explora Cruise Overview + Day at Sea
- Naples + Amalfi, Italy
- Trapani, Sicily
- Tunis, Tunisia / Ship day
- Carloforte, Sardinia
- Mallorca, Spain
- Barcelona, Spain
Traveling To Rome
We drove to North Carolina to drop the boys off with my parents, and then we took a flight from Raleigh to Dulles, and then a direct flight from Dulles to Rome. We used credit card points to book United Polaris business class! (Learn more about that here.) The Polaris lounge in Dulles was SO NICE, and it was great to have free food and drinks and comfy chairs for our six hour layover.
Here’s my Polaris lie-flat seat for the 8.5 hour overnight flight.
Having now experienced this type of flight, I admit we didn’t do it right. We left around 6pm and instead of trying to sleep for the 8 hours, we got caught up in the champagne and multi-courses of food. I did exactly what I said I wouldn’t do and basically got 3 hours of broken sleep! Next time I would 100% prioritize sleep and forgo the frills. I did love the skincare goodies we got at our seat. And it was significantly more comfortable than sleeping at a right angle in economy.
The many courses of food was pretty decent! I could barely eat breakfast which was served at my body clock’s 1AM.
Appetizers + Salad
The main course
Breakfast
We landed in Rome at 2AM body clock time, and went through passport control and baggage claim without issues. A huge bonus was that our hotel had a complimentary shuttle so we didn’t have to stress about finding a cab!
Sleep Walking Around Rome
Our room wasn’t quite ready upon arrival, so we tried to freshen up as best we could and they stored our luggage while we went looking for breakfast and then walked around the city. First stop: coffee + croissants.
Our hotel was a nice stroll to the Colosseum. It was awesome to see in person! We weren’t well traveled enough to know that tickets were sold out for the whole day, or we would have gone inside.
But we were still able to get very close.
We were just so happy to be there!
We walked through a residential neighborhood in search of a restaurant for lunch.
And we found one tucked into an alley that was filled with Italians enjoying their lunch.
We had a fried eggplant appetizer, pasta, and bread – classic Rome!
Corso 281
During lunch, we got a text that our room was ready, so we took an Uber back to the hotel. My sister booked us at Corso 281, which was so lovely! It’s a tiny hotel, but it had some nice perks including the airport shuttle and a free breakfast. The location was great, too.
We took a nice afternoon nap, showers, and dressed up for dinner out. We also had a sparkling rosé in our room, compliments of our travel advisor and had some of that on the balcony before heading out!
We went to the famous Trevi Fountain on our walk to dinner.
We just loved the narrow streets and restaurants tucked into every nook.
We had dinner at Maccheroni Ristorante out on their patio.
Afterwards, we strolled back to our hotel. It’s amazing how old and famous everything is!
After a pretty decent night’s sleep, we had breakfast brought to our room! Looking back on this meal, I wish I could eat it all! But I had very little appetite in the moment.
We went for a power walk around in the morning before showering and heading to our cruise port on the coast. It was a fast 24 hours in Rome. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but it was seen in a day – hahahah.
