So, after the announcement that we were going to miss Tuscany and go early to Rome, we sat around in Vines trying to decide what we wanted to do. A couple of people said the port city, Civitavecchia, was actually a cute little town in its own rite, so we thought, what the heck, let’s just walk around the port city, grab some good food, try the local wine, and call it a good day.
By the way, we had to do another round of COVID testing. No big deal. Our stateroom steward came around with the tests. Took us all of 5 seconds. Fine.
The day, we had a slow morning since we weren’t going to dock until noon anyway. That was a nice break! When we were docked, we cruised on down to the gangway and made our way off the boat. Now, we were told that we weren’t allowed to walk out of the port so we hopped on the shuttle that took us just outside the port.
It let us off in another weird area. Weird because it was in an ok spot, but we had to backtrack a long ways in order to walk into town. Why not drop us there? But, whatever. We started walking and immediately went the wrong way and came to a dead end at the backside of a marina. Because of course we did! So, backtracked again and finally we were at least going towards town. Thankfully, another couple came walking back and helped explain how to get there because it was confusing and you had to pass through a weird gate that didn’t look passable from our direction. Whew!
Once we got to the town, we started looking for a place to eat- it was probably 1 by then and we were starving. As seems to be the case, this took some time. Finally, we came around a series of blocks and found this extremely cute, tiny little place that had about 6 tables in it and 2 were taken by locals. Perfect! There was one waiter who looked like my nephew Simon but about 9 years older. He was wonderfully awkward and his glasses were exactly the same.
So, we sat. Well, first, the waiter asked us if we had green cards. Green cards? Yes, green cards. Good Lord man, I’m not trying to immigrate. I just want some pasta. Turns out, he meant vaxx cards. Yup - had those!
We ordered a bottle of white wine and two small plates. Maybe this is the regular sized plate. Who would know? They are small to us, but the perfect portion. We shared a cacio e pepe and a shellfish risotto. They were, of course, insanely good. The wine was also quite good. We noticed the locals were all drinking the same thing.
The women in the restaurant were quite taken with Jason’s beard. We’re not sure it was in a good way, but they definitely stared at it and talked amongst themselves.
At one point, another local woman came in and our waiter dropped everything and they ran together and hugged and hugged. It was the cutest thing ever. I don’t know that she was his aunt, but I’m pretending she was because she reminded me of me when I see Simon!
After that beautiful lunch, we strolled back to the ship. I’m sure there was a busier area of town to shop but we were perfectly content with the locals only spot we found. What a treasure.
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