Rome TODOTC.com To Do in the Twin Cities Trips Rome Date: May 7, 2025

Cruise Day 1: Twelve Days on the Med, May 5th Cinco De Mayo

To say our cruise started on May 5th would be simply wrong. We booked the cruise in early January five months ago. And rarely a day went by in those five months that we did not work on it. We must have watched a hundred You Tube videos, went to fifty web pages and joined twenty You Tube groups. In a word, we knew our subject.

Both E & I come from companies, and businesses that we own that if you don’t have a plan, you don’t last long. So along with us on the trip was a 20-page three ring, plus a dozen pieces of paper on what to do, then an addition to notes on our phones. Want to call it anal? Go ahead but we are not the ones running for the boat as it leaves the harbor without us or holding up the line.

So, what was on all those documents? First our cruise would be twelve days on the water. So, we started with twelve pieces of paper for the date, the location, times we would be in port. Things we decided to do or avoid at the port and everything we could think of related to that day. For instance, did you know the small island of Cyprus is owned half by Turkey and half by Greece? And there is a line on the country map & ground that no one is allowed to cross? Kinda like the Koreas. Wait, you can cross it, you just can’t return. A major point in going to Cyprus. Note to self! We’ll put that on the Cyprus page.

Did you know rumor had it you can be arrested at some ports for wearing camouflage? And I’m NOT going to bring up displaying you are current or former US Military. We are not in Kansas anymore. Did I mention we were traveling kinda in near the Middle East? Something a WI Guy and South Dakota lady might only dream of.

OK a dozen sheets of paper accounted for. Now what to pack? We are going to the Vatican in Rome. Where women need to be covered neck to toe. Egypt has similar laws to see the pyramids. And Ride Me A CAMEL!  So we went to REI, the Global Village Mall and the Somali Mall to find your basic Indiana Jones outfit. Zip off pants/shorts we found, shirts we used what we had. I called them our Safari clothes. If we failed to pack them, we would not be seeing what we traveled 4000 miles to see.

Then there’s remembering everything to pack. I love lists to checkoff what was in my two carry-ons and my 50 lb check bag for two weeks. Which we weighed multiple times at home as we added to the list. Hell, the electronic charger cord list with watches, phones, computers, batteries and ear buds was fifteen lines long. But we rarely need to buy anything on vacation at triple the price that we have at home.

A few more pages were occupied with when to interview the dog/house sitter. When to order Uber. Were all the Apple Air Pods, first trip with them, identified correctly and in place. Were all our bills current. What credit cards were we using? Which countries took which currency. Hint The Vatican does NOT take green backs… Go figure… but Visa is fine.

The money thing alone would have fit on a page. How much to pay the house/dog sitter, how much and when. We got a special international credit card for the trip. We put $100 each in our Walmart pay-as-you-go cards totally not connected with our bank accounts. One was drained hourly $2 at a time a few months ago by a questionable vendor. We got it back. And $300 cash, greenbacks each for tips, food and such. As of day three all our decisions seem correct.. lucky GUESS!

I also created a Facebook group just for this cruise. 200 people of the 3,000+ on board, commented on it in addition to about daily posts from myself about to latest You Tube videos about: Our Ship the NCL Viva, each country, Cruise Dos & Don’ts, each port and a hundred other things. We got VERY educated on the Med Over the pond! As the Brits would call it.

Oh, and we changed a few locks and put in a new digital so could verify our dog sitter, a great lady, actually was feeding our dogs. For a person we were leaving the keys to our house with that we met only twice.

Cinco De Mayo May 5th it starts… well kinda.

We had a 12:30PM flight from MSP. 12:30 minus two hours we are supposed to be there early was 10:30 AM. Add an hour for international flights we were on: 9:30 AM. Plus an hours buffer our Uber pickup time ended up being 8AM after we walked our dogs before leaving. Our driver was great and on time but two days later Uber still thinks we missed our ride. Don’t you love technology.

So far so good. We went to the American Airlines kiosk and there was a great lady there to help. We are AA members, and we like to have check-in on our phones. But two intelligent tech-savy people could not get the system to work… THIS Time. But thanks to AA and MSP they got us checked in.

TSA and the gate were both great. Of course, wearing my plastic TSA belt meant no belt issues. Wait some idiot forgot and left his phone in his pocket, OK a second walk through.

So, at 9 AM we were in place at our gate at MSP. Three hours to eat breakfast and listen to the neighboring people talk about their failed love lives.

The 12:30 hour flight to Chicago went without incident. This would be our first real test of our new Air Pods. Don’t have an air pod? They are $80 for four of them on Amazon and worth every penny.  They tie into the apple network. Air pods are little larger than a quarter. They work with the Find My App. Put it on your dog, suitcase, hell kid and you will know where in the world they are. If they get close to anyone’s cell phone the location gets back to you.

When Josie our Vizsla dog, decides to run at the drop of a hat in the park in back of our house, we have no idea to look north or south. She has one on her collar. At least NOW we have a CHANCE to find her. Our son can now track US through our two week adventure as you can SHARE the Applepod location to multiple people.

Well, all three of our checked in bags now have Air Tags in them. When we left MSP Airport all our Air Tags were within .1 miles of us as we crossed the Mississippi River. So at least we knew everyone/thing was on schedule.

We landed at O’Hare at 2 PM us and even though we could not see them our bags did too. Chicago/ O’Hare was uneventful other than a fantastic speedy automated McDonalds. And at 5 we boarded our seven-hour flight over the pond to Rome and the Med. End of day one.
 

Contact us Dennis@ToDoTC.com