My first trip to Europe on Freedom of the Seas 9/3/17 with many pictures and video!

[aubreyc1988]

Camposanto Pictures...

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

Theres a little chapel with a bunch of Catholic relics and holy items that are behind a rope, there is also a list of what relics there there on the walls. Get your google translate out if you only know English, because the list is not in English

 

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

 

 

 

Selfie time, in case you forgot what I look like

 

 

 

As you can see from the pictures, the Camposanto is under restoration and has retained a lot of damage from WWII so a lot of these statues and frescoes you see have been restored majorly and are not completely original.

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

 

 

 

These faces crack me up

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

After the Camposanto, we walked over to the Cathedral, which has free entry. Since we bought Camposanto tickets, we were able to just show our tickets we used for the Camposanto at the Cathedral, since they included the Cathedral.

 

 

On the way over, my husband caught an iPad photograher!

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

 

Cathedral Doors

 

 

 

 

 

[aubreyc1988]

 

Inside the Cathedral

 

it's VERY dark inside, so sorry for the poorly lit photos...my iphone 6 can only do SO much hehe

 

 

 

 

 

[dreadpirate3]

Great pictures! I'm biding time until I board the Freedom in 9 weeks. I love your review.

[TheCaveman]

Embarkation

While sitting there, one of the bar staff told me that the cruise before was chartered and was a EDM music cruise and that they had a really rough time getting people off the ship that morning.

 

Hi, do you mind telling us your sail date, as we are looking for an EDM cruise for next year :') so we can google what event it was :evilsmile:

 

We agree, food in Europe is so much better than in the States. Especially salads.

 

Loving the review so far...

[aubreyc1988]

Hi, do you mind telling us your sail date, as we are looking for an EDM cruise for next year :') so we can google what event it was :evilsmile:

 

We agree, food in Europe is so much better than in the States. Especially salads.

 

Loving the review so far...

 

Was called "The ARK" and we sailed on 9-3. I think theirs was a 3 day chartered. The crew looked pretty tired when we boarded, I think they were heavy drinkers lol

[TheCaveman]

Was called "The ARK" and we sailed on 9-3. I think theirs was a 3 day chartered. The crew looked pretty tired when we boarded, I think they were heavy drinkers lol

 

Thanks, i just found it. Looks interesting...

 

Loving your review...

[aubreyc1988]

Thanks, i just found it. Looks interesting...

 

Loving your review...

 

Thanks for following along! Sorry I go SO slow but my husband shot in RAW so for his photos I have to re save them all by JPEGS and then resize them, and them upload them to an image host to post on here, it's QUITE a process haha

[cinnamon]

A good read, thanks.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

[iluvit!]

Throughout this whole tour, I was taking snapshots of my phone for reference to the time schedule. I wanted to see how close we were to being on schedule/how accurate Shore Excursions was

 

So this was the time our motorcoach officially left in the morning - so we were leaving a little ahead schedule

 

 

 

 

The white stuff on these mountains is not snow, it's Carrara marble!

 

 

Getting closer to Pisa...once you start getting closer, it gets quite rural, as the tower is not in the city center of Pisa.

 

 

So I want to talk a bit about the "smart device" portion of this trip. There was another Florence and Pisa tour that was on your own, but no smart device, that was around the same price. But I figured, hey why not take the smart device one!?! RCI says on their cruiseplanner summary of the tour that the smart device is supposed to last you 4-5 hrs. When our tour guide handed them out (which was about 30 minutes into the tour while we were driving to Pisa) everyone couple/family received one smart device to share, but the battery was already down to 30% or lower for EVERYONE on the bus. My husband used it on the bus for about 10 minutes and the battery went down to 20%. Soon, everyone were bringing up their smartphones that were given (Samsung phones) and asking for another one or for a recharge. Our tour guide said if they werent charged up, that they wouldnt charge back up in time and she had no replacements. To me, this is a HUGE rip off. It's obvious that these phones have dead batteries and our tour guides attitude was take it or leave it. To me, if you pay for a tour that says SMART DEVICE INCLUDED FOR 5 HRS, I expect to get that to a reasonable degree. I would say at least 90% of the bus (including us) turned in their phones before exiting Pisa because it simply wasn't even usable. This wasn't a huge deal for us, since we have T-Mobile limited 3G and 2G speeds while in these ports, but I could see it being a big deal for some people who were depending on the smart device

 

 

 

Did you have to put a European chip in your phone and if so, where did you get it?

 

 

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[CruisinShips]

Loving this review as we head to Barcelona in a week for the same cruise! Question for you...is there any way to find out what time a given RCI tour starts? We have independent tours scheduled every day except we cancelled the one we had at LaSpezia because we felt 5 consecutive full day tours would be too grueling. So we decided to cancel the one in the middle of the week and thought we would sleep a little later and maybe wing it and do Pisa and/or Florence. RCI has a 4 hr tour but they don't say the time. Any insight there? Thanks and thanks for this great review!

[aubreyc1988]

Loving this review as we head to Barcelona in a week for the same cruise! Question for you...is there any way to find out what time a given RCI tour starts? We have independent tours scheduled every day except we cancelled the one we had at LaSpezia because we felt 5 consecutive full day tours would be too grueling. So we decided to cancel the one in the middle of the week and thought we would sleep a little later and maybe wing it and do Pisa and/or Florence. RCI has a 4 hr tour but they don't say the time. Any insight there? Thanks and thanks for this great review!

 

the best way to get this info is to email shorex@rccl.com with your tour code (it's at the bottom of the tour description on the cruiseplanner) and ask for a time breakdown/itinerary of this tour and they should give you a breakdown like they gave me for the one I took

 

you can also add the tour to your cart, and when you select number of passengers, it will then plug in a default start time in the cruiseplanner checkout...which should give you a rough idea!

 

Thanks for reading along, will be posting more this afternoon after I get some pictures sorted and get done with work :) You are going to have a great time!

[aubreyc1988]

Did you have to put a European chip in your phone and if so, where did you get it?

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Forums

 

no, T-Mobile gives their customs 2G-3G speeds in many different countries...I was surprised I had LTE in some ports :)

[aubreyc1988]

Ok, so here is my visitacity plan for Florence, which I created based upon the times I got from Shore Excursions for the tour (They had us arriving by at Florence by at least 11:30AM)

 

 

However, we left Pisa late because we were waiting on people to meet us back at our meeting point in Pisa :mad: There's always some people who just ruin things, you know. We were supposed to meet up at 10:15, but this is the time we ended up leaving Pisa. I can't believe we waited so long for these people, should have left them in my opinion.

 

 

it is supposed to take 1 hour to get from Pisa to our drop off point in Florence.

 

Apparently, when taking a motorcoach into Florence, the driver has to stop and get a clearance of some sort. This is the time we stopped at this point, which we were already 30 minutes behind because of waiting at Pisa.

 

side note: in case you were wondering how my phone got charged, I have two of these external chargers, which are SO great and I can't recommend them highly enough. I can charge my phone from 0-100% about 4.5 times when the external charger is fully charged. I've had them over a year so very reliable and high quality trusted brand. I've had some that don't last or don't charge what they say they will charge.

 

http://amzn.to/2xnEgTz

 

 

This is supposed to take under 10 minutes. Our tour guide kept on telling people to not get off the bus and to stay on, that this wasn't a restroom stop, but people got off anyway and went to the restroom. And of course, this meant that we were further delayed because we had to wait for people to come back from the bathroom. In fact, the tour guide had to go and FIND them. Totally ridiculous, in my opinion. This is why I prefer to do the "Do it yourself" version of things, be in control of when you leave and when you arrive. However, no excuses for this tour guide. Everyone on the tour was an adult, there's no reason to wait for people and to baby them.

 

This is when we finally pulled out of that parking lot

 

 

 

And this is the time we arrived in Florence.

 

 

So basically, this means I missed my time slot for the Accademia. We could have walked there to see if the would still let us in, but it was a decent walk/cab ride so I just decided to cut my losses. I'm sorry if I seem overly sore about the people who were late, but I gave myself plenty of leeway with booking the entry times and we were SO far off schedule. I'm not going to lie, I was in a bad mood from the time we left Pisa until we arrived in Florence. I really, really, really wanted to see the David, not just some replica of it, and these people, because of their tardiness, ruined that for me. I know I can hopefully go back to Florence to see it, but who knows what life may bring. It was really one of the top things I was excited about so it was a HUGE letdown. But once I got off the bus and away from the people on our tour, I felt a bit better and was determined to just roll with the punches and have a great time anyway!

 

So if you look back to my visitacity trip planner, I was supposed to go visit the Florence Cathedral and then the Uffizi at 2pm, but I just decided to not go by my planner to the T for this port, as we were already so behind and messed up. We were hungry, so my husband and I decided to find a nice place to sit down and have a great Florentine lunch, and then go to the Uffuzi at 2pm, hit the record store nearby,(my husband's wish, not mine haha) and then head back to our meeting point to go back to La Spezia.

 

So up next, pictures of Florence, lunch in Florence, and a review and photos of the Uffizi

[Woobstr112G]

OP;

I just had a chance to read portions of your review and look at your great pictures. Thanks for taking the time to post them.....:):):)

 

Bob

[Shelley61]

I just wanted to pitch in and say 2 things:

 

1. I LOVE this review! Your attention to detail and enthusiasm is amazing. I hope you had as great a trio as you make it sound.

 

2. I TOTALLY agree with you on the tardiness of the other cruisers! I read your last post and was getting “excursion-rage” as I went through it! I don’t think I’d have been able to contain the snarky comments as they walked past. Angry on your behalf, but hope you made the most of the time you had in Florence.

 

 

Michelle

 

P.S. Just got back from our cruise last week and wanted to thank you for the Travelon bag tip... I bought one on Amazon Prime literally the day before we sailed! I felt so much more comfortable with a bag that could be protected and it’s so lovely that I’ll use it as a weekend bag too. Love it!

 

 

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[nycfa]

Loving your review!! We are seasoned cruisers but European Cruises are way out of my comfort zone but we are toying with the idea of one with the kids (Teens).

 

So loving all the information! Thanks!!

 

Can't wait for the rest of the review. :)

[aubreyc1988]

Loving your review!! We are seasoned cruisers but European Cruises are way out of my comfort zone but we are toying with the idea of one with the kids (Teens).

 

So loving all the information! Thanks!!

 

Can't wait for the rest of the review. :)

 

Thanks!!!! don't be afraid, I felt SO safe in Europe...at first, it was a little disconcerting seeing all the armed men around the big monuments/transit, but then you just forget about it and have a wonderful time! In fact, most of the time I felt safer in Europe than I do in downtown Dallas (which is still pretty safe) Also, even if you can't understand the language, French and Spanish are quite easy to read, and there are a lot of signs with have multiple languages, including English - Watch a lot of Rick Steves, he has great tips for first time Europe visitors!

[aubreyc1988]

There is something about right when you get to Florence that does make you do this face :o

 

 

This is Piazza Santa Croce

 

By this statue, which is across from a leather factory (That I guess has some sort of deal with RCI) is where the meeting point is...since there are no Diamonds International in Europe, RCI tours seem to tour up with other companies, like leather factories, Cameo Factories (Coming later in Naples), and even restroom stops!

Ohhhh look, another iPad photographer!

[aubreyc1988]

 

As I mentioned before, my husband wanted to go to this record store, so here it is

 

 

He ended up buying two, he really liked this record store and could have spent more time there, but I gave him 15 minutes ;p

 

 

Before I start writing about the place where we ate, let me shed a little light on something you will see in Florence. Now, when you see this, you may think "Oh, I must go here because it's so popular" but I just can't wrap my head around this place. It's a famous sandwich shop, called All Antico Vinaio

 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187895-d1102253-Reviews-All_Antico_Vinaio-Florence_Tuscany.html

 

Maybe it's fantastic, but how good can a sandwich really be? :confused: a 2 hour long wait, because that is what the lines were looking like...these people are crazy, no matter how delicious those sandwiches are....but if you want to try it, go for it, but you have my opinion about it. Most of the people in the photo below are waiting in line, and the line goes all the way to the end of the street and wraps around.

 

 

the restaurant has two locations right across from each other, so you can get in either line and it's the same restaurant. They say it's pretty cheap, 5 euros for an amazing sandwich. To me, not worth the wait and I had enough sandwiches in my day in Paris. There are LOADS of restaurants with no wait that you can enjoy in this area, which is near the Uffizi. All seemed affordable. Maybe not 5 euros, but you will do so much queuing in Europe, I can't see why you'd voluntarily enter one.

[aubreyc1988]

 

So, here is the restaurant we randomly picked. It wasn't too busy, but we still had to sit inside, while I prefer terrace seating. One reason why you should consider terrace seating vs inside seating in Europe is because there is rarely AC, and this particular restaurant we went to was a FURNACE inside.

 

Very quaint though, isn't it

 

 

Here's the tripadvisor site for it

 

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g187895-d4195138-Reviews-Osteria_Vecchio_Vicolo-Florence_Tuscany.html

 

And if you want to go visit it, here's the address so you can plug it into Google Maps for walking directions

 

Address: Via Lambertesca, 16, 50122 Firenze FI, Italy