Looking for excursion recommendations with the Epic or privately June 17

We are traveling to Europe to celebrate a big birthday. Love to see famous sights, not crazy about extreme crowds. What should we NOT MISS in:

Naples

Rome (Vatican and Coliseum really interest us, can they be done in 1 day?)

Florence

Cannes

Mayorca

The ships excursions are difficult to determine our best choice.

All suggestions welcome. If there are private known Tour companies with a good reputation we are interested in those as well. Thanks again for your feedback!!:)

Depending on when you go, crowds are going to be very hard to avoid, particularly as you wish to see the major sites.

It is my opinion, for the Italian ports, a private tour is very beneficial. Majorca is mostly a beach resort. Cannes is another topic, but we have DIYed Cannes to our satisfaction. However, you are behind the curve with booking private tours...you need to get moving. Many vendors are already booked.

Have you looked down the board at the many threads on touring your ports (and on the France and Spain boards for Cannes and Majorca? Just a quick look would reveal a large thread on the wonderful Rome in Limo, which operates in Rome, Naples and Florence. Booking multiple tours with them gets a discount.

I am new to navigating cruise critic and need a little guidance on how to view the boards. It is a little overwhelming so I was hoping for some feedback. Thank you for your response!!

Use this as your bookmark for Cruise Critic, where you start every time you come onto Cruise Critic:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/

Everything will make more sense.

Also, you may wish to consider joining your Roll Call. A Roll Call is a place where people on your specific cruise talk about anything related, including setting up tours, transport...stuff like that. Your Roll Call is here:

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=2527198

If you are wiling to spend some money then consider private tours.

Many of these sites will be crowded but a private tour can allow you to get around and feel a little less crazy with the crowds and that includes the people on your tour.

For the places in Italy there are lots of choices.

A couple of them include:

http://www.joebananalimos.com

http://www.romeinlimo.com

You wil find that if you book three tours you can get a discount.

It is worth looking at.

Keith

We are traveling to Europe to celebrate a big birthday. Love to see famous sights, not crazy about extreme crowds. What should we NOT MISS in:

Naples

Rome (Vatican and Coliseum really interest us, can they be done in 1 day?)

Florence

Cannes

Mayorca

 

The ships excursions are difficult to determine our best choice.

Done that route six times - and on the Epic three - love it. Rather disappointed to not be able to fit a Western Med in this year!!

You probably need to read through a few trip reports to get an idea of what you can see in each place, however I have to say that however you plan, you will miss some "unmissable" sights - because you just cannot fit everything in. Naples for me is a good case in point. I have stopped in Naples six times and know that the Amalfi drive is a must-see, but I still have not got around to doing it! Instead we have gone to Capri, Herculaneum, Pompeii, the city of Naples and Sorrento. They were six great days.

You have not said how many people are in your group. This makes a difference. Private tours seem expensive but if you have a group of 8, they work out as a bargain. If you are a small group, you can go to your cruise roll call (a great resource) and hook up with others for some private tours. We usually do DIY on our cruises and as long as you follow the golden rule of "get off the ship early and be back early" it is fine. You do however need to do a bit of work and if you can buy tickets in advance, do so. Because we travel as a couple, there have been times that we have taken the ship tours instead - on our last trip to Palma I wanted to go to Valldemosa and we went on a ship tour because public transport options made getting back before sailaway look a bit dodgy.

You say that you don't want extreme crowds - they are a bit hard to avoid in Rome (especially the Vatican and Coliseum) and Florence (oh my). You have to make decisions about 'seeing' and 'going into' places. I visited Florence and went into churches rather than the famous museums, I don't feel the loss of not seeing the original David statue and just treat the whole of Florence like an open-air museum. I skipped standing on the Ponte Vecchio because of the crowds.

If you are interested in the Vatican, does that mean the museum (just to see the Sistene Chapel?), going into St Peter's or enjoying the wonderful St Peter's Square (which I have enjoyed whilst listening to a Rick Steves podcast)? Depending on when you travel in June, you may find that you can get to see the Pope - we walked through the square to get to Castel Sant Angelo and stumbled on a Papal Audience, the website says that you need tickets but we arrived half-way through and all we did was go through security and we hung around a bit - he is a must see for me. Seeing the Coliseum could mean a photo from the outside and seeing the Arches of Titus and Constantine, or you could mean you want to go inside. Both are great options in my book. You don't say how far you are willing to walk in a day, but you can easily see St Peter's, Coliseum, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon and the Trevi Fountain in a day if you walk from place to place. Lots of photo opportunities on the way. If you want to explore the Vatican museum, then that is your day (or week) taken up.

That was a long introduction, but the main attractions on the cruise are...

Naples - Capri, Pompeii (Herculaneum is less crowded), Vesuvius, Amalfi/Positano/Sorrento. There are a couple of sights in Naples itself e.g Sansevero Chapel but they are closed on Tuesday so I would not say that Naples itself is a must-see on this cruise.

Civitavecchia - Vatican/St Peters, Forum, Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, fountains and arches galore, Piazza Navona, Pantheon, Piazza Navona + an abundance of churches and basilicas - and my favourite spot if you don't want crowds - the view from the Janiculum hill.

Livorno - Florence, Pisa, wine tasting in Tuscany/San Gimignano, Cinque Terre (one of my best ever cruise tours) and if you want to see Renaissance Tuscany without the crowds ... Lucca.

Cannes - Cannes (itself instead of rushing off somewhere you can have a bit of a lie-in) with its high-end shops, film star hand prints and wonderful walk along the sea front ending up on the beach (take your best bikini!!). Further afield: Monaco, Eze, St Paul de Vence, Antibes, Nice.

Palma - The stop is annoyingly short but if you have never been before but the Old Town and Cathedral/the beach makes for a great day. If you are visiting mid summer, you might just want to go to the beach!! Further afield I think needs private or cruise trip rather than DIY Soller, Valldemosa and the Drach caves seem to be

Barcelona - I hope you have planned a couple of days pre or post cruise, it is one of my favourite cities.

I am new to navigating cruise critic and need a little guidance on how to view the boards. It is a little overwhelming so I was hoping for some feedback. Thank you for your response!!

Yup, big website & quite complicated at first, especially to technicocologically-inept dinosaurs like me.:confused:

But worth persevering cos it has some great info.:)

Use this as your bookmark for Cruise Critic, where you start every time you come onto Cruise Critic:

 

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/

 

Everything will make more sense.

 

......... or bookmark any of the forums - I use https://boards.cruisecritic.co.uk/forumdisplay.php?f=114 - and navigate from there using the "forum jump" box near the bottom of the page. Click on the arrow alongside "forum jump" & it'll bring up all the forums. Same on all the forums. Saves going back to the main page each time.

If you ever get lost wondering where you've posted just click on your screen name, top right on any page, then "your profile", then "statistics", then "find all posts by ...."

Each forum also has a "search forum" box, top right.

In this Italy forum, type in the box "Colosseum".

This will bring up all the threads which mention the Colosseum.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/search.php?searchid=123559707

Easy when you know how.

JB :)

We are traveling to Europe to celebrate a big birthday. Love to see famous sights, not crazy about extreme crowds. What should we NOT MISS in:

Naples

Rome (Vatican and Coliseum really interest us, can they be done in 1 day?)

Florence

Cannes

Mayorca

 

The ships excursions are difficult to determine our best choice.

All suggestions welcome. If there are private known Tour companies with a good reputation we are interested in those as well. Thanks again for your feedback!!:)

Did you ever find any tours? I am on the Epic 6/13 out of Rome. I have two in my group and we are signed up for the Pompeii, Positano and Sorrento tour through Italytours.EU. It's a shared tour and only costs 69 Euros per person if at least 8 sign up. I believe there is room for 14 but we need a minimum of 8. It's scheduled for 6/19. Here's a link with the tour description. https://italytours.eu/naples-tours-napplessorrentoamalfi/pompeii-sorrento-positan/