The Star Princess from Rome To Venice, Part I

John Lazzatti and I sailed on the Star Princess on a twelve night cruise from Rome to Venice from October 28, 2007 to November 9, 2007. (In another article I told about our stopovers in Rome and Venice before and after the cruise.)

The Star Princess, too wide to transit the Panama Canal, is a magnificent ship of 109,000 tons which entered service in 2002. It carries about 2600 passengers. We never felt that the ship was overcrowded, or that we faced long lines or hordes of people. On a trip like ours shore excursions were handled extremely well.

The ship has no single cabins so we each had a double cabin. We were in outside cabins without Sunset cruise sorrento balconies on Emerald deck (Deck 8). We had partially obstructed views, but we could still get good views outside through the large windows. For the twelve night cruise we each paid a total of $3532.00 including all taxes and port charges. We used Pavlus Travel.

We didn’t know until we were on the ship that two of the three dining rooms, the Capri and the Portofino, all three holding about five hundred diners, were anytime dining rooms where you chose when you wished to eat and with whom you chose to eat. The Amalfi dining room has two seatings and has assigned seating. In addition there are two ala carte restaurants where for $15 or $20 you can have a restaurant experience similar to a landside restaurant. The Lido was another dining option.

We embarked at Civitavecchia, the port of Rome. Our first night at sea we spent at second sitting at our assigned table in the Amalfi dining room with a middle-aged couple from Seattle. Later we made new friends and ate with them at various times in the Portofino.
John and I each spent a total of $818.00 for eight guided land bus tours which were charged to our ship’s account. Lunch was included in almost every land trip.

Our first stop was Naples, but we never saw the city because we chose to see places outside of town. We first stopped at a farm outside of Sorrento where we received our first of two lunches that day, saw a demonstration of cheese-making, and were guided around the working farm. We were shown how olives were shaken into nets. A shop sold preserves, food items and spices. Because our shore time was limited, this stop was an unnecessary one. A farm is a farm is a farm.

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