TravelTalkOnline Forums Travel and Vacation Forums World Wide Travel Med Cruise info

Hi all...we are doing our first cruise ever and first trip to Europe this summer. Wondering if any have taken the western Med cruise recently and if you stuck with the excursions by the ship or did you use independent companies...or winged it on your own in certain ports. Don't think it will be as easy to do independently as it would be say in the Caribbean to just get transportation once you get there since many of the sites are an hour from port. Think we will need to arrange ahead of time. Any thoughts? Thanks in advance!

My advice is to go early and stay late. We cruised out of Venice and finished in Barcelona. With two extra days at each. Had a wonderful time.

We did a Carnival cruise with a French speaking group from Montreal (where my wife is from) and the travel agent arranged the excursions for our group separate from the ship. Some were good and some were just okay. Some sites like Rome and Florence were really far from the dock. Hope that helps.

Thanks...we are going in and out of Rome. We are going in a couple days early and staying a day after the cruise so will enjoy all that Rome and area has to offer before and after the cruise. Do you remember which companies you did your excursions with?

We went on a Med cruise in 2012, on the Princess cruise line. We left from Venice and finished in Rome. I went online on Cruise Critic and found Roll Calls, it is a message board where you can connect with others going on the same cruise. You can also find out info about the ports of call. We decided to not set up our own excursions or go with other groups. We booked all our excursions through the cruise line, all were great and manageable groups. If you go on a non cruise line excursion and something happens that you don't get back to the ship on time, it's your problem. Enjoy, we loved our trip. One of the most enjoyable things was sitting on our balcony after a busy day in port and sailing away. Enjoy.

Have you already booked your hotel in Rome? We stayed there for only one night but loved the hotel we stayed in, The Hotel Pantheon. It was close to everything and very nice.

Sorry, I just saw all the replies on the other forum, it looks like you've gotten everything figured out.

We also stayed at the Hotel Pantheon and really enjoyed it. I found the best price by booking on the hotel's web site.

We'll be doing our third med cruise from venice to Barcelona on norwegian. Quite a bit less expensive than previous two on princess. The food can't be that bad to pass up the savings. Besides with 10 portts in 12 days well barely be on the boat less be in our cabin.

First trip, went with ship excursions. Second trip all on our own. Considerable savings (100s per port) and freedom and it appears ship excursions have climbed in last 3 years.

To do on your own, you have to do a bit of research. Google what you want to do. Like how to I visit Vatican and coliseum from civitavechhia cruise port. Many have gone before you. Some leave very detailed bread crumbs. Write those crumbs down on index card for each port. You can buy entrance to Vatican and other cities museums online in advance. Print on high quality as we found readers in Istanbul needed high resolution bar codes. Quite a story to get in with lousy printouts.

What ports are you going to, what do you want to see? My way is amazing race vice sitting captive in a motor coach.

Thanks for all the info. Far from everything worked out but a plan is being developed and lots of research being done. As of now we are doing two ship excursions, 2 days on our own, and 1 private excursion. The two ship excursions might change to 1 if a private pops on my roll call. Will see. I have Rome all taken care of as the son of a good friend is living there at the moment. I do have one more question that I am finding great debate on. Do you take your passport ashore with you on port days, or do you leave it in safe in room? If you leave it in your room do you carry a copy? What is your suggestion? Getting so many different opinions.