HELP-using ship excursions in the Med

Please share your experience with using ship excursions. My DH and I are on a 19 day b2b eastern and western cruise from Venice to Barcelona. Finding DIYs seems a bit overwhelming. Special concerns are Naples/Pompeii, Santa Margherita, Livorno ( have done Florence), & Palermo.

Thank you for any and all help.

Arlene:)

We did the ship excursion to Pompei but most of the others we did independently with people we met on the Roll Call board for the cruise. The Pompei trip was great.

Gary

We have been to Pompeii twice and Mt. Vesuvius once. We took ship excursions for the climb on Mt. Vesuvius and one of the times to Pompeii. We liked all the tours.

Do you have any specific questions or concerns?

We did a ship's tour to Pompei from Naples. I looked into going independently using the train, but we were there on a Sunday when train service was limited.

We had a walking tour of the city with a very good guide and some time on our own. Our tour also stopped at a cameo factory, which was interesting if you don't know how cameos are carved. I'd rather not have these shop stops, but they're often part of tours.

As Gary said, your best bet is your roll call where research into IY tours is spread out over lots of people.

That sid, we've rarely been disappointed by a ship's tour - they're a safe choice.

Please share your experience with using ship excursions. My DH and I are on a 19 day b2b eastern and western cruise from Venice to Barcelona. Finding DIYs seems a bit overwhelming. Special concerns are Naples/Pompeii, Santa Margherita, Livorno ( have done Florence), & Palermo.

 

Thank you for any and all help.

Arlene:)

NAPLES: Check out Rick Steve's Mediterranean Cruise Ports for a great walking tour of Naples that leaves directly from the port area - walk towards the left and not towards the right when you leave the port entrance and be transported into a very surprising and lovely part of this often gritty city.

If you go to the left though a few blocks you will find the Naples train station and from there you can arrange your own trip to Pompeii on the Circumvesuvia train, just before you get to the Naples main train station.

Another DYI treat in Naples is to take the one hour hydrofoil from the port area to the beautiful little island of Procida, the home of limoncello, some charming sea side restaurants and towns - local bus there or if you like to walk you can go from one of the island to the other by foot or combo of walking and local bus. Much more off the beaten tourist path here than Capri or Ischia- more small garden like vacation homes on this island

PALERMO: The HOHO (Hop On Hop Off) bus has agents to greet you where you get off the ship and it is just a few blocks to the pick-up point. Good way to get around or again, you can walk to some interesting historic parts of the city from the ship. There is a mozzarella tasting bar on the top floor of the posh Rinasemento (sp?) Department store that we surprisingly wonderful with roof top views on the main street down from the ship. It is near one of the market areas where you can finish things off with some wonderful Sicilian gelato.

Pick-pockets are real in this city so always exercise caution at all times - mainly small roving groups of young people who size up the situation, create a distraction and then move fast. Should you have any concerns, go into a store or someplace where you will feel safer. Or stay on the HOHO bus and see the grand scope of this city. The pick-pocketers tend to cluster around the obvious tourist collection spots and are not necessarily all over the city.

LIVORNO: Take the local train from Livorno to stop Lucca on the route that goes eventually to Florence and have a wonderful day walking the pedestrian streets and tree-lined ramparts of this intimate, intact, walled, elegant city. Renting bikes in Lucca is another way to enjoy this city - birthplace of opera composer Giacomo Puccini.

SANTA MAGHERITA: This can be your jumping off spot for the sting of little seaside/cliffside towns called the Cinque Terre, some of which were damaged quite badly in recent floods so planning a trip here will need current information. But a walk on the "Amore" trail is easy to do and very pretty between the two most southern towns in this string of five little jewels and give you a flavor of what is in store if you can manage a few more hikes between the rest of them once you find schedules that work for you. There is a train that connects all five villages but it is mainly in tunnels so you don't see much when riding along, but stopping at any of the villages that are back to normal can be a treat too. It has become quite touristed and crowded with higher prices and less authentic life in the last few years. At one time there was no road access whatsoever to these towns. Or you can take a ferry and enter into them from the sea, or possibly go on to Portofino or other little sea towns up that way.

thank you all for your wonderful advise. CC is made up a wonderful group of people who make cruising more fun.

Arlene

Palermo: Obika in the Rinascente department store top floor - Mozzarella tasting bar, and other items. Link is in Italian, but you get the idea and the location http://www.obika.it/italiano/ristorante-a-palermo.html

Some reviews of the same restaurant in Milan in English: http://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Restaurant_Review-g187849-d1084214-Reviews-Obika_Mozzarella_Bar_Rinascente-Milan_Lombardy.html

We normally do private tours or diy - but we did do the ship's tour to Lucca & Pisa. It was actually quite decent (that's a compliment as I am used to smaller groups):) definitely go to your roll call - there could be some good options there:)

On our recent E. Med cruise on NA we did many HAL tours and were very pleased with them. I was hesitant, but DH liked the assurance that the ship would wait if the tour was delayed. I found most of our choices involved smaller groups than HAL excursions on other cruises. They had the personal touch; guides were excellent. Good luck in making your selections!

Venice we did on our own, also one of our days in Istanbul. There's so much to see in Venice that you'll have no trouble doing it yourself. Use Venice Connected to preorder transportation passes and museum passes. We bypassed the LONG line waiting to purchase tickets at Doges Palace and were ushered right in.

Last fall in the Med we found the ship's tours to be adequate, and they do have the benefit of guaranteed return to the ship, as well as ease of booking.

That being said, I was disappointed on two fronts. First, they are limited by the fact that, even if they have two or three walking figures to indicate mobility levels, it seems HAL never turns anyone away, and thus the tour falls to the capability of the least mobile of the trip. We were on a long cruise with a higher average age, so in many cases this meant SLOW and thus detracted from times at venues.

Second, the tours were cookie-cutter -- no allowances made for day of the week or local changes. One from Cadiz, for example, dropped us in a coastal village for an hour -- on a Sunday morning when everything was closed, including the "highlights" they told us to see. So everyone just sat on benches for an hour waiting for the bus and driver to return. Wouldn't it have been nice to vary the tour when on a Sunday to accommodate closings? I would have thought so, but apparently there was no such effort made. Private tours allow you to make these adjustments.

You won't go "wrong" with a ship tour, but it could be so much better imho. I am disappointed with HAL for not insisted on more.