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Sometimes, the excursion isn’t what you’d expected

Civitavecchia is the port city for Rome, so most people choose an excursion in this port that will take them into the Eternal City. Me, I’d been to Rome before, and knowing that the trip from the port into town would take a long time, I opted to see some other places. That’s how I picked a tour called “Bracciano Lake and Wine Tasting.”

(Also, let’s be honest: It said “wine tasting.” I was pretty much in when they said that.)

Based on the name of the tour, the excursion provided everything it promised: We did see Lake Bracciano, a caldera lake (formed in an crater) outside of Rome, and we did do a wine tasting at Osteria dell’Elefante, located inside the cellar of Castello di Torre in Pietra.

I will say that our time at the winery was fantastic. The owner of the winery gave us a short tour and told us about the process of wine making, and I learned a few new things I hadn’t known before. Given that I lived in Oregon (which makes a lot of wine) and have done tons of winery tours before, that’s saying something.

We also had an excellent wine tasting with some delicious snacks at the Osteria dell’Elefante. I loved the name because the elephant was a favorite of my late Grandma. It felt like a sort of a sign.

What I didn’t love about the excursion was that out of the roughly 4.5 hours of the excursion, we spent almost half of it on buses: It was about an hour to the winery, then another 30-40 minutes to our stop in Anguillara on the shore of Lake Bracciano.

I loved the town we stopped at, but unfortunately we had only half an hour at this location, which wasn’t enough time to do much of anything but take a quick couple of pictures and buy a to-go beer from a local bar.

Once we re-boarded the bus in Anguillara, we had another 50 minutes or so back to the port in Civitavecchia. Honestly, by the time we returned to the ship, I just didn’t feel like venturing into the city center, especially since you had to use a shuttle bus to get there.

In hindsight, I probably wouldn’t do this excursion again: It had too much time on the bus in relation to the time we spent in the places it visited, and I didn’t like feeling rushed at both stops. I kind of wished instead that I had just ventured out in Civitavecchia, to explore this port town and experience some local culture.