UK and Med Cruise - Day 6 - 10 September - join the cruise

Happy start to the day - the hotel provides a continental breakfast including proper coffee!  After that we had a short walk around the general area of the hotel and then checked out to wait for our shuttle to the port.
We got 3UK SIM cards for our phones and our tablets, and they're supposed to work in Italy in the same way as in the UK (ie no extra roaming fees or data costs).  Very disappointed at first to discover that this didn't seem to be the case - for example my phone couldn't connect to the internet although my iPad could.  However once we got away from Rome it all seemed to be ok.
The shuttle arrived a little late but in plenty of time to get to the port; we were originally going to be early but instead we arrived just as boarding started.  I had heard stories about these shuttle drivers and I have to say that they weren't exaggerated.  It's about 50km from Rome to the port, varying from crowded busy streets to motorway.  The driver spent the entire trip either using his calculator to work out some details on a piece of paper he was looking at, or texting, or both!   There is also a tendency to treat lane markings as just a vague hint; we overtook people in places where I'd have thought the risk was a bit high.  Anyway, we arrived at the port in Civitavecchia in one piece (and only mildly travel-sick in my case!) so it's all good.  I think the driver was hoping for a tip but sadly for him the shuttle company website says tips aren't necessary, and none of the people onboard were Americans - so, no tip for him for that trip.
We arrived just after 1pm.  Our boarding documents said that we were to arrive at 2pm, not to arrive early because we wouldn't be allowed to board, etc.  However, they almost always say this, and our experience is that they don't always stick to their own rules.  As it happened, almost no-one had arrived  and they basically let us straight onboard.
Our cabin is a typical cruise ship cabin, although I was very pleased to discover that the refrigerator is actually functional (often they're not powerful enough to actually cool anything, but this one works fine) and also that the air conditioning works (sometimes the air-conditioning is shall we say disappointing).
Five full sized cruise ships in port today, plus a few smaller ones.  One of the five is an old friend - Celebrity Eclipse - this was the ship that took us on our Baltic Cruise in 2014: