MSC Musica Visas for Turkey?

Hello,

I will be cruising on MSC Musica at the end of October with friends. Can anyone advise if we need Visas to visit Turkey? We are not flying in to or out of Turkey, just visiting 2 different locations (Izmir & Istanbul) on our ports of call for 1/2 day stops. Our nationalisties are Dutch, Italian, English and America.

Also, if taking part in excursions, is English speaking tours available as we only have 1 Italian travailing with us and think he may be tired if having to translate all week!

Thanks for any help.

:)

Anja

We were on the 2nd September cruise on the Musica, we are British and didn't require visas for Turkey (and were not aware of any other nationality requiring one either) You were given a boarding card on leaving the ship in both Izmir and Istanbul and returned it when you went back on board, there was no need to fill it out.

On the question of excursions, as long as there were sufficient English speakers requiring a trip an English guide was available. If not then you were placed with a bi-lingual guide and travelled with non-english speakers. We did trips in Izmir, Istanbul and Dubrovnik and had an english speaking guide each time. All of whom were very good.

Any other questions, let me know, otherwise enjoy your cruise, we certainly did.

Alison