As you may know, on August 24th, Rachel and I headed out for a 16 day trip to Europe to celebrate 10 years of marriage bliss. Today will be the sixth part of a series of blog posts highlighting this amazing trip. (Check out part one, two, three, four and five here!) Without further ado…Part Six – Cruise Excursions Pompeii and Rome!

During our Disney Mediterranean Cruise (DMC),  the middle 4 days we were able to port and explore some amazing places. Today’s post covers the first half of the DMC Ports of Call/Excursions, which found us in Pompeii, Naples and Rome!

POMPEII/NAPLES, ITALY
The first day off the boat we stopped in Naples, Italy for the day. We ended up booking a 1/2 day Adult Only excursion over to Pompeii, which was roughly a 20 minute bus ride away from the ship.

We ended up with a group of about 20-25 people along with our tour guide. Pompeii, while not the top of our list of things we saw on our trip, ended up being a cool place to visit. This ancient city is now just ruins, but it was really neat to learn more about the history of this area. Plus, seeing Mount Vesuvius in the background was definitely impressive.

We got some great pictures during our time in Pompeii and our tour guide was a really sweet older and very Italian gentleman. All in all, I think we were both glad we were able to see Pompeii.

After spending about 3-4 hours with our group, Rachel and I made our way over to Naples for about an hour or so to explore on our own. While Naples wasn’t necessary my favorite city, it was still cool to walk around for a little bit.

ROME, ITALY
The next day off the boat took us to the most impressive part of our DMC week, Rome! We booked a full day Adult Only excursion and ended up with roughly 30 or so people in our group. We met up with one of our tour guides who gave us a little bit of commentary as we made the 90 minute journey to Rome. Once we got to the Rome area, we picked up our other tour guide, who ended up leading most of the actual tour while we explored the city.

Friends, I could spend a lot of time talking about our day in Rome. We ended up checking off about 4 major items from the bucket list just in Rome. But as to not spend forever on this post, I’ll hit the highlights…

• The Colosseum Simply amazing! The Colosseum was as impressive in person as I dreamed it would be. We spent a few minutes exploring the outside, before making our way inside. Our tour guide spent some time giving us commentary and then allowed us a little time to explore on our own. So happy to be able to check this off the bucket list!

• Pizza in Italy Rachel and I, of course, grabbed lunch at a Italian restaurant where I had easily the best pizza I’ve ever eaten in my life. It was absolutely perfect and why wouldn’t it be in Italy?! My only regret was not getting a picture of the pizza as by the time I thought about it, the pizza was already in my belly.
• Vatican City Vatican City was unlike anything I’ve ever seen. While it was crazy crowded, it offered a tremendous amount of history and beautiful architecture.

• Vatican Museums The downside to only having a day in Rome (and being in a larger tour group) was having to navigate the Vatican museums in a timely manner. There was just so much to see and between the other tour groups, in addition to our group, the amount of people was pretty crazy. Still, everything we were able to see was so amazing. Pictures really don’t do justice to the beauty of these museums and buildings.

• Sistine Chapel Check another thing off the bucket list. While walking into the Sistine Chapel, the first thing that struck me was how historic this room really is. And while the amount of people crammed into a rather small room made it slightly claustrophobic, I couldn’t believe how unbelievable it really was. And while technically you aren’t allowed to take any pictures, I was able to sneak a couple of pictures of Michelangelo’s “Creation of Adam” painting which, of course, is famously on the ceiling.

• St. Peters Basilica St. Peters Basilica is known as the most renowned work of Renaissance architecture and the largest church in the world. It was breathtakingly beautiful. Rachel and I felt very fortunate to see 3 absolutely stunning churches during our trip, from La Sagrada Familia and Notre Dame to St. Peters Basilica.

• St. Peters Square And finally, we made our way outside of St. Peters Basilica to St. Peters Square. This was a great end to our day in Rome, where we were able to take in the true beauty of Vatican City and all of the gorgeous architecture it has to offer.

Stay tuned for the final blog post of this amazing 16 day journey, which covers the final 2 Ports of Call, Florence and Nice!