Excursions Europe

Just rebooked our trip that we had to cancel the end of August. Going NCL for 14 days from Barcelona to Venice. Is booking the excursions through NCL any better than going private. If private who do you recommend and which excursions are a must (first time in Europe). I tried a private one for my son on his honeymoon on St John, they were a no show so a little leary about private. Looking for some great ideas

Privates are an excellent way to go on a Med cruise. Most will tell you a private tour is an excellent way to use your limited time in port efficiently.

If you look over on the Ports boards, here:

http://boards.cruisecritic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=603

you will find all sorts of quality tour providers.

Join your Roll Call asap! People there are probably arranging tours and may have spots available. Many will have done a lot of research and will be able to give you leads about tour providers and options.

As one other said get on your roll call. That said, we used Private tours on our eastern med cruise with the exception of 2 ports. When going to Rome, private is good, but if you want to see the Vatican order tickets on their website on the internet, else wise you will be in one of the long lines about 3 blocks long. Pre-ticketed visitors go straight into the entrance thru a separate door. All of our private tours were in 9 passenger vans which are used by most of the excursion companies. These vans can get into the small streets in these towns that the 55 passenger busses cannot and they have to park blocks away from the main areas you want to see.

Good Luck on your cruise!

Your idea of ​​going to the public sector not to the private is an idea that I should take into account so my friend. From what I understood the conditions have not been met to complete this cruise?:confused:

My experience is to look at all options.

Usually we do some private and some ship tours and also do some things on our own. The Med can be very port intensive and if you book tours everywhere you can really get tired of all of this after awhile so try to space things out.

For certain places doing the private tour is good because you will have the undivided attention of the guide, you can change things up and you can move at your own pace. For other areas this is less important.

Keith

Keith has excellent points. Don't feel you have to do an excursion (private or cruise line) in each port. Some ports are easily walked. Others can be seen with a bus ride or two, or a taxi ride.

We did private tours and never regretted it. We've gone on 2 Med cruises and by using the private excursions we were able to see twice as much and we weren't as wiped out at the end of the day. We've used Joe Banana, Rome In Limo, Bob's Limo, and a couple of others (names escape me right now). All were highly recommended on Cruise Critic and TripAdvisor. Each and every one of them were on time, with our name on a sign when we arrived in port. They gave us excellent information on where to meet them, what time we should leave the ship, etc. Their reputation depends on being there on time to meet you and getting you back to the ship on time. Use one of the ones recommended or go with a few who are booking on your cruise roll call. There were 5 of us so it was even more cost effective for us to go with a private car/guide than to book the ship's tours.

I agree with those who suggested checking out your roll call to see if anyone is arranging tours with independents. I've never had a problem with any of the private vendors I've booked, but I always check here and on Trip Advisor to make sure they're reputable. The quality of our excursions increased remarkably when we stopped taking ship's tours--now, the only time I even consider booking through the cruise line is if the activity we want to do is really far from the port or the time in port is very short and the length of the tour takes up most of it. I've booked on excursion through the cruise line in the last about 8 or so cruises.

If your roll call is quiet (the roll call for my cruise in two weeks is extremely quiet and we don't even have a meet and greet scheduled, let alone any tours) then directly contact vendors recommended here and see if you can join a group they're forming. I even contacted the roll call of for another ship that will be in port the same day we are and signed up for a private tour with some of the people on that sailing. It's the only port in which I'm doing an organized tour--as others said, don't feel you have to book a tour at every port. Many of them are easy to do on your own.

Have a wonderful cruise!

:D