Congratulations on booking your first cruise and on the upcoming nuptuals.
Unless you have been to those cities before, I urge you to not go off on your own. It is wise to stick with the ship's tours. Especially with this being your first cruise. You are not in any port for a particularly long time, and if the ship doesn't know where you are when departure time comes - they will leave without you. On the other hand, they will wait if a ship's tour gets delayed for some reason.
Well, that is my two euros worth. Others may tell you to go on you own. I prefer to never throw caution to the wind.
I spent close to a year on ships in the Med and never had what I'd call rough seas - but it does happen. I wouldn't worry about it.
I like Carnival's product. The food is quite good. Don't expect Michelin star quality, but that is true for all mainstream cruise lines. The extra-fee restaurant is better quality than the main dining room - and most people feel it is worth the extra charge.
Thanks for the advice Dave! hope you had a good Christmas.
Spending time at cameo or carpet factories or other commission-earning places on some of the cruise tours seemed unappealing... I'm wanting to safely enjoy some ports on my own without any hard-sell so if there's anyone going on the same cruise with similar thoughts, please let me know...
Thanks
Wow, we are going to be on the same cruise. We haven't planned any tours, they can be pricey when you add them all up. I bought a book Mediterranean by Cruise Ship, very helpful with maps of some of the cities. In Dubrovnik, (you can get a map of it from the Croatia tourist board) the old city should be easy to walk to and many of the reports say to walk the ramparts, which what we plan.
In Rhodes it sounds very easy to walk to the beautiful walled city. In Naples, it will be very easy to get to the train station and take the train to Pompeii. The train station is across from the ruins if I remember correctly. We were in Rome about 10 years ago and took a tour to Pompeii. We had to make several stops and didn't spend very much time at the ruins, but time at 2 factories.
At Civitavecchia, you can walk to the train station if you are flying back to the U.S. from Rome.
The only tour that I am considering is to Olympia, but I have read that some people enjoyed wandering around Katakolon. I have never been to Greece, so just being there will be fun for me. We take some tours, but I get tired of the factory stops and long bus rides.
There are 6 of us traveling together, see you on the ship!
Hi Bonnied
I was considering the Olympia shore excursion as well, but read somewhere that the ruins weren't that fantastic... besides, we'll be seeing a lot of ruins on this trip! So we've opted instead to spend time walking around Katakalon at leisure. We're doing the Ephesus/TerraceHouses tour with Carnival though - pricing seemed reasonable. Yes, i know what you mean by the factory stops - there's a lot of time spent at these places when you could be seeing more interesting things!
We have pretty much decided to skip the Olympia ruins also, but bought the Ephesus tour with Carnival too.
I had a friend who used to say, "Great minds run in the same channels".
See you on the ship! I'll be the one who wears black pants day after day after day....
Has anyone else noticed when you print out your boarding passes, you click the date for your cruise. There is a March 4, as well as a March 5. Do you think it is VIPs for March 4th. We are a March 5, of course.
We are going to the same cruise on Mar 14. I am planning to go to Lucca and Pisa. The private van tour by driverinrome.com is Euro 450.00 for 6, 500.00 for 8 and 550.00 for 10. We are party of 4. If anyone interested in joining or you have any tours that we can join, please let me know.
Linear Mode
