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The cruise line does deliver cheap air fare, in both senses of the term.

Rome- Vatican City

We stayed two nights near the VC and took another tour thereof, we were traveling with another couple who had never been to Europe.  The tour was OK, very crowded obviously, similar to our first tour but I learned a few things.  We didn't do much, still jet lagged of course.  The cruise started on Day 3 headed to Greece.  En route, the ship stopped quite suddenly while we were at dinner, a lot of groaning as if they shifted into reverse, which they had indeed done.  There was a boat in distress, full of refugees, we had to recover.  We watched the operation from our deck, the boat of about 30 feet was crammed with people standing up, someone later reported half were Afghanis.  The ship took them on board after checking for weapons using their tender boats.  Then we detoured to Calamata to drop them off.  Our first stop was scheduled to be Santorini but now we couldn't make it, so we went to Athens (Pireaus).  

By now, I had contacted a pretty bad cold, so I stayed on board while the other three toured Athens, none of them were at all impressed.  We had been before.  The next stop was Mykonos, I was able to debark and see some of it, it seemed to me to be a tourist trap, gift shops and restaurants, no real scenery that I saw.  So I went back to the ship early.

The ship was the NCL "Epic", which is pretty epic, but not run very well IMHO relative to other NCL ships we had been on.  Anyway, nothing was terrible, it just wasn't as good.

Next stop Firenze (Florence, port from Livorno).  rain rain rain.  It was miserable.  The good news is we had a superb lunch at this place.

Next stop, Cannes, France.  No rain.  My wife's daughter who lives in Marseille took a train to meet her so I guided our two friends about, never having been there.  It was pretty nice, especially after the monsoon.  We had a great lunch with French beer, I ordered in French and was understood.

Then back to Rome, end of cruise, for two nights staying at the Cavalieri Waldorf Astoria, an interesting hotel, once a Hilton built in 1963 upgraded in 2007 to the W-A.  It certainly is among the nicest places we've stayed, the breakfasts were amazing.  They have a free bus going to the center of Rome we used twice, that helped.

The next day I booked a food and wine tour in Trastavere that was excellent (through Viator).  We stopped at five places, the food indeed was superb.  Below is the itinerary, it's a good one I think, to see these places by other means would be difficult in one trip.  We'd like to return to Rome, Syracuse, and Florence.

Where was this in Florence? Was it the Piazzale Michelangelo? https://maps.app.goo.gl/KZPfvmPL427a7QVu9