<p>In October my sister and I will be boarding a ship in Civitavecchia. We plan to stay in Rome a few days before the cruise begins. Does anyone have suggestions how best to get to Civitavecchia from Rome with our luggage in tow? Does Rome have anything comparable to Super Shuttle? Any advice is helpful and will be greatly appreciated. All responses will be acknowledged and may be sent to S.A. Goodman at P.O. Box 1373, Englewood, CO 80150-1373; or thegoodmangroup@msn.com.
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Ground transportation: Rome to Civitavecchia
Message Submitted by thegoodmangroup... on Thu, 03/03/2011 - 11:29
This question gets asked a lot on Cruise Critic and these are some the typical answers:
1. Get a group to hire a van to reduce per person costs -- you can go to a "roll call" on the Cruise Critic forum to meet others on your same cruise and they often make arrangements if their incoming/outgoing flights coordinate. (This is the best, most direct response.)
2. Take the train into Rome directly from the airport and then take the train back out to Civitavecchia and walk to the port -- must be able to handle your luggage easily obviously. Plus there is an intermediate transfer station where the airport line an the port iine intersects so you don't have to go all the way into Rome and back out again - a metro map will tell you where this is. People actually do this and have been fine with it as a far lower cost alternative.
3. Bite the bullet and pay the cost as just one more extra that is part of your entire travel package. There is a taxi driver monopoly here which you cannot fight.
4. Fly into Milan instead of Rome, take train to Rome Stazione Termini from Milan Malpensa and Rome metro train out to port sound like a bizarre alternative but in fact may make just as much sense as other possibilities.
5. Come in the night before and stay in a hotel in Civitavecchia that provides a shuttle service to airport and port pick-up drop-offs.
6. Pick a cruise that does not start in Civitavecchia. Genoa or Savona work much better if you want to leave from an Italian port, which other cruise lines operate out of.
I've been combing Cruise Critic for recommendations and came up with Airport Shuttle, which despite its name does offer Rome (city) to Civitavecchia port transport as well. Their website is www.airportshuttle.it. They've been very quick to respond to emails so you might contact them for additional information. Six of us on our cruise roll call got together to share a van from the port to the airport and price was very good for us.
We travel to Italy every year. We only use and recommend www.driverinrome.com . They are a family business and are wonderful to deal with, whether it be a driver-guide or just a ride from the Civitavecchia cruise port or airport to your hotel in Rome...Fantastic...We already have appointments this year with them for our cruise...
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Moderator note: URL corrected and made clickable
There is an hourly train from Rome's Central train terminal. The cost is 4.5 Euro and is about a 40 min. ride. At Civitavecchia you can see the cruise ship from front of the train station but too far to walk. There are always cabs in front and you are there for a fraction of the cost.
I am sure that the shuttle vans will be fine to the cruise ship. We just took a cab, which of course was very pricey. On the return, we took a chance and ended up sharing a van with others we met on the dock from our ship who also had not booked any transportation. We were able to negotiate a price and it worked out just fine.