May 17, 2012: A Sea Day
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From the Ship's Log:   Friday, May 18, 2012 Civitavecchia, Italy (Rome) 4:30am      Pilot embarked 5:30am      Safely docked

Today our first cruise ends, and for once I didn't get up early enough to see us pull into port. This last page won't have a great deal on it about the cruise activities, since we didn't do much at all today off the ship or on. So since the page would be pretty light anyway, I'm going to gather together all the pictures that Fred and I took throughout the cruise of the decorative elements aboard the Noordam and put them on this page.

Docking in Civitavecchia

It was still dark when we came into Civitavecchia and, as a matter of fact, I was still asleep. When we got up to have breakfast, we were already docked and the sun was up.

Our captain had docked us pointing out of the harbor, which means he either backed in or, we found out later, did a pinpoint turn in the harbor itself. On the long thin pier across from us, two other cruise ships were docked along with a large ferry. Here are some views of those ships from our balcony:

Today we got to watch the ship being cleaned; when we got back to the suite from breakfast, we found that the balcony dividers all along the side of the ship had been folded back to make it easier to clean the entire deck at once which, later in the morning, that's exactly what they did.

Well, even though we aren't getting off the ship today, that brought our first cruise to an end. It was quite a ride!

You can use the links below to continue to the album page for different day.

	May 17, 2012: A Sea Day
	Return to the Index for Our Cruise to Europe