Grand Princes Shore Excurision Experience Ephesus and Istanbul Turkey

[1KAP]

Please forward your experience with cruise line excursions or other suppliers; if very satisfied please forward name of company and itinerary they provided.

[wwinfl91]

We did the Ephesus excursion with Princess during our Med cruise on the Golden in 2003. The guide did a good job given it was a big bus tour that actually had two buses following one guide around. The other guide's english evidently wasn't up to it so he just acted as shepard making sure the group stayed together. We saw Mary's house and church which as far as we were concerned they could have skipped and spent more time at Ephesus instead. We would have loved to have done a private tour but we couldn't get things arranged.

We did do a private tour in Istanbul we visited the Hippodrome, the Blue Mosque, St. Sophia, the Topkapi Palace and the Grand Bazaar. with a private tour guide. We had met 3 couples from Los Vegas on the Roll call for the cruise and arranged before the cruise to join them on private tours in Monte Carlo, Florence, Naples and Istanbul. Our guides name was Mehmet who met us at the dock with a new air-conditioned van that would take us into the city itself. Most of the tour was going to be on foot but it was nice to have A/C for awhile.

Here is his web site.

http://www.turfantastik.com/

He told us he could also have done a tour for us at Ephesus had we asked him,

I doubt he would remember us but as I said he did an excellent job for our tour of Istanbul. I don't remember for sure I think we paid $75 a person which was about 1/2 of what Princess wanted for a similar tour.

Have a great next cruise.