A bright and early arrival this morning, sailing into the port by 6 am. Although our official arrival time was 8 am., it is better to have the long tours on the road by 7 am.; otherwise we never get them back on time in the evening. There is a saying in the Dutch language “all roads lead to Rome” and they do, but a traffic jam is most likely a Roman invention as well. Getting in and out of the Eternal city is a form of controlled mayhem and getting the tours on the road an hour earlier does help. Especially with at least 5000 other cruise guests in buses on the road as well.

There was a whole parade of cruise ships at the pilot station. Ahead of us was the Insignia with 700 guests on board. For this ship Civitavecchia is the change over port and that made her the first ship going in, as with luggage to be offloaded, it had to be early. Behind us was the Brilliance of the Seas with a maximum of 2400 guests on board, followed a little later by the Voyager of the Seas with a maximum of 3800 guests on board. All these people wanted to see something of the area, with most of them going to Rome or the surrounding country side, so a busy day.

With the increase of cruise ships calls, there is the need for more docking space and the port has embarked on an aggressive expansion project. The breakwater (the pier that protects the port from the waves) has already been extended with 1500 feet and another 1500 feet has been projected. The waste land along the coast is being filled in and new docks are constructed. As they have made not up their minds yet completely about where the cruise ships will dock from now on, the new docks have been laid out in such a way, that when almost complete, a decision will be made if it will be a cruise ship dock or a containership dock. Therefore there are no fixed passenger terminals yet, only re-inforced tents. These will stay until a final plan has been worked out. For us the tents where not necessary, as our guests could walk directly from the gangway to the buses.

On departure we had the compulsory tug again who pulled us of the dock and into open waters. A tugboat is required on departure and I thought that if I have to pay for a tug, I might as well use the tug. So instead of swinging off the berth, which is the normal procedure and the easy way out for the tug, (the ships thrusters do most of the work) I had the tug pull the Veendam astern for about 2000 feet. It is possible to swing off the berth; the harbor entrance gives me 150 feet clearance on the bow and the same on the stern, but why do so if you have miles of open sea, just 2000 feet away from you. So the tugboat had to work for the money this time.

Once outside we headed North West for our next port of call Livorno, with yet another early arrival, as we have full day tours to Florence and Pisa.