Shuttle Buses at Livorno and Civitavecchia

Hello

I hope you can help. I have a couple of questions. We visit Livorno on 15th August and Civitavecchia on the 16th August (travelling on Indepedence of the Seas). At both ports we have arranged trips using cruiseexcursions.com. The joining instructions for Livorno are:

"When disembarking your cruise ship there will be a free shuttle bus provided by your cruise ship which will take you to the coach park where all of the private tours are waiting".

I know Royal Carribean does not always provide a free shuttle bus, therefore can anyone please tell me whether at Livorno, RC provide free shuttle buses to the coach park?

For Civitavecchia the joining instructions are "Take the shuttle bus this will take approximate 3-5 minutes to get to your meeting point".

Therefore, again, do RC provide free shuttle buses at Civitavecchia, and for those that have done this trip, where is the actual meeting point?

Thank you

I can't comment on Livorno, but there are free shuttle buses from ship to the gate of the port in Civitavecchia. So I am assuming your tour company will meet you at the gate. (We were on Celebrity Silhouette). EM

We have taken the Cruising Excursion transport twice from Livorno to Florence.

In both visits there were port buses into Livorno and another to the parking area.

Check the sign on the front of each port bus to give its destination.

A few weeks ago we found 2 buses going to the parking area. One was filling up and the other was intending to fill up next. It is only 5 minutes on this bus to the parking area where you will find the CE buses, but they do not run very frequently so allow 15-20 mins or so to reach the parking area.

At Civitavecchia, taking the train on our own, we walked past the 'CE' rep close to where we got off the port shuttle bus. 'CE' were easy to identify.

In 2013 they were near the square fort, but there is construction work at the port so the route is different for 2014. They know you will take the port bus to reach them.

There are issues with both ports so lets go into some detail. Having been to Livorno on about 2 dozen cruises, we have never seen a free shuttle bus (or a paid shuttle bus) that will transport folks to the parking lot pick-up area adjacent to the main port entrance (this is also known as the port Shopping Center). There is supposed to be an internal port shuttle bus (operated by the port) but we have never spotted this bus on our many visits to the port. We are also not aware of any cruise line (including RCI) that has a free shuttle bus. Most of the cruise lines do have a bus (for which you must pay) that usually starts about 9 AM and takes folks to a central location (far from the train station) in Livorno. We once asked the bus driver if he would drop us at the port entrance and were told NO! You also are not permitted to walk through the Port of Livorno. On one occasion when we needed to get to this Port Shopping Center building to pick up a rental car we were forced to use a taxi (for 20 Euros) to take us less then 1 mile to that point.

As to Civitavecchia, all is now a bit unusual because of a major construction project near the main port entrance (the normal drop spot for the internal free shuttle bus). The Port of Civitavecchia runs a very good free shuttle bus system, but they have been dropping folks at a secondary port entrance/exit that is some distance from the usual drop point. We would assume that all the local tour providers are familiar with this temporary change.

Hank