Vatican & Colosseum

Nope. Not unless you just want to rush through, nod your head a couple times, say "yup" and move on. The Vatican museum is huge and the Sistene Chapel needs more than a couple of minutes. I would say choose which one you really want to see and go with that. Myself, I'd say if you went with Coloseo, Forum and Palatine Hill you should be able to see it all in that time without rushing too much. Even just the Vatican Museum itself, without going to the basillica, you'll only get to see a small portion in the time you have.

Jill, I don't think I'd try to go "into" the Vatican Museums on such limited time. There's so much else to see and that will take a minimum of 1.5 -2 hours to walk through. September is still the height of the tourist season. I'd save the Vatican Museums for a trip when you have enough time to explore them. You might look at this article, Rome in a Day for Cruisers, written by a fellow traveler. It will walk you through some cruise day-trip options. Good Luck!

I agree, doing both would be very difficult in 6 hours. Yes, get tickets ahead of time to avoid the long lines at whichever site you chose. We were in Rome in October, and the lines early in the morning at the Vatican make lines at Disney World look like childs play!

Thank you for the suggestions. This will be the first time to Rome for our cousins, but if they like it well enough, perhaps we will meet them there in the future for a week long holiday. Then, we can explore the Vatican in a whole day or two at our leisure. To keep expenses down this time, I am going to act as our own tourguide for the Roman Forum and Colosseum.
That way we need only the entrance tickets, plus the cruiseline provided transport. Wanted to use the handy local train, but Hubby thinks it best to use the cruise bus to make sure we don't miss the ship.

Jill, I strongly recommend Rick's book for your self guided tour of the Forum/palantine Hill/Colosseum. You'll understand much more with an explanation. And buy water before you get too close; the food truck near the entrances wanted 3 euros for a bottled water or soda. About as much as you'll pay on board! It took 30 minutes in late October to get thru security and buy tickets at the Forum, thus make sure you're standing in the line to 'enter' if you prepurchase, and not the line to buy tickets.

Agree like us we only have a short time in Rome so giving the Vatican a miss. We have booked a very reasonable priced tour thru www.tickitaly.com Its only 67 Euro for both of us and gets into upper and lower levels and the dungeons hopefully floods gone also Roman Forum and Palatine Hill included.

We did Rome as a port of call on a Med cruise last year. It's easy enough to do by yourself, but does take advanced planning. The key is to be among the first to arrive at the train station and know exactly what to do. While everyone else stumbled around and waited in line, we bought tickets from the newsstand, validated them and jumped to the right track and caught the earliest train possible. Headed straight to Palatine Hill to buy our tix, toured the Forum, skipped the lines at the Colisseum, visited a beautiful church as we got lost on our way to the Parthenon and had wonderful pizza for lunch nearby. Threw our coins in the Trevi fountain on the way to the Spanish steps. Took the Metro to the Vatican and grabbed some gelatto to give us energy to breeze through St. Peter's before taking a train back to the port. Hardly spent anything and it was one of our favorite days in port. I know it sounds rushed, but we loved it. And now we're planning a 10 day trip to Italy to get more (but not at that pace!)