Day 8- All Aboard The Geriatric-Transatlantic Express!

Finally, cruise day was officially here!  Today we started our two-week journey across the Atlantic Ocean which would feature a few stops along the way in Italy, Spain, France, and Portugal before cruising across the ocean for sunny Florida.

Having researched the cost of laundry on the ship (over $100 for a bag), I felt it was in my best interest to get all of our dirty clothes washed in Rome before making our way to the ship.  As I went to drop off my clothes at the cleaners, I was told that they would not be ready until noon (four hours away).  Seeing as how my girlfriend wanted to catch the train to the ship in two hours, this was a bit of a problem, but after the washer-woman snatched my clothes away from me and shooed me out of her shop, I was left with little options other than to lie to Colleen about how long they would take and do my best to kill a few hours.  Seeing as how Colleen is the queen of collecting shoes (Quote from Colleen- "I love collecting shoes, it doesn't matter if I wear them.  I just like collecting them!"), it was only fitting that she of all people naturally forgot to bring any form of comfortable/athletic shoes on vacation with her.  Alas, we were able to kill some time searching for the perfect pair of Reeboks before getting our last authentic Italian gelato fix.  With the retail therapy now complete, I headed back to the laundromat and prayed that my clothes would be ready to go.  That would be too easy though, and after some awkward Italian-English-lost-in-translation-moments, the lady pulled my almost dry clothes out of the dryer for me.  As the washing attendant was sitting there with her bug-eyes watching me prance around with my girlfriend's underwear on my head a la Nacho Libre fold my girlfriend's underwear, I found it to be in my best interest to just throw them in a bag and handle my business elsewhere.  It was officially time to get in to cruise mode!

With our undergarments now smelling lovely, we dragged our luggage through the streets and subways of Rome en route to Termini Station where an hour long train ride awaited us to the port city and cruise ship terminal at Civitavecchia (good luck pronouncing that one).  As is customary in many busy European train stations, they do not post the track number that a train will be departing from until a few minutes before hand.  Given our great luck in Rome so far, we were naturally at the opposite end of the terminal from where we needed to be and with only twelve minutes, lots of luggage, and a few hundred meters to cover, we found ourselves in panic-induced stress mode!  With under a minute to spare, we made it to our train's platform and in true Roman fashion we were greeted by friendly touts punks trying to weasel money out of us and  rip our bags out of our hands to carry up the train steps for us in exchange for some cash.  Once we were able to shake off the money-hungry-tourist-robbing pricks, we were able to settle down and enjoy the train ride that would take us to our floating home for the next couple of weeks.

Having done some research on the world wide web the night before, I determined that we would be able to walk from the train station to the cruise ship terminal with relative ease as it was about 500 meters away.  Seeing as how there were lots of significantly older people doing it, I did not think this would be a problem.  Well let me just tell all future travel companions of Colleen McParland one thing: she does not like carrying luggage anywhere!  Even after pointing out that the crippled old man and the five-hundred pound lady were making the trek by foot she let it be known that she was the boss and walking was not amongst the boss' favorite activities.  Point taken.  Dear.

Upon entering the cruise ship boarding terminal, two things became clear to me right away:

1.       the security guards were ridiculously lax and I was really wishing I had smuggled on a shit-ton of contraband booze;

2.       every other person in the terminal who was not an employee of some sorts was at least 65 years of age!

Seeing as how we arrived fairly late in the afternoon thanks to my laundry fiasco, there were no lineups to get onto the ship as I am sure most of the fat Americans were already in the buffet lineup on the ship by that point.  Just prior to boarding the ship we had to take the mandatory cruise line enforced pre-cruise photo, at which time the photographer informed us that we were going to fit right in (as he was shaking his "no" and laughing).  So let it be known people, when you want to feel young just go on a Transatlantic cruise.  Our first night onboard was fairly low-key and consisted of us blowing some cash in the casino and eating the best dinner I had eaten in quite some time.  After exploring the ships many amenities after dinner, I still could not fathom the insane amount of geriatrics on our ship!

*For the record, our ship had a capacity of about 3200 people.  While I believe we were not sailing at 100% capacity, I would estimate that over 98% of the people were at least 65 years of age or older.  From what I could see, there was a group of about ten teens/pre-teens, the same number of twenty some-things, and then a very small splattering of people between the ages of 30-65.  Yup, it was going to be a happenin' cruise...at least in the onboard medical clinic.

~Brent~