loufiji

Good luck, you will have a marvellous time! If you're doing it on your own it really helps to prepare as much as you can before you go, download maps, read up on particular buildings, pieces of art etc. that you want to see. You have no time to do it when you get there. Happy Travels!

I have just come back from a NCL cruise and recommend people look at alternatives to organised tours & try doing it yourself! If you do a bit of research it's not hard using trains (and as long as you give yourself at least a spare hour, there should be no problems getting back to the ship on time.) With buses or cars I figure there is always the chance of traffic problems and accidents etc.

We visited Naples, Rome, Florence about 2 weeks ago.

For Naples, we hired a private driver- Marcello, who was fabulous (www.seesorrento.com). I checked the train schedules but knew it would be really hard to fit all we wanted to do into a day. We drove down (up?) the Amalfi Coast. Sorrento and Positano were packed with tourists and buses, we went off the beaten track to a small restaurant with the most amazing view where we had the Best Italian Meal Ever. We then went to Pompeii for a couple of hours (Marcello can hire a private tour guide) and it was only half an hour back to our ship (which is why Marcello recommended we do it last.) I highly recommend Marcello, he can talk the hind leg off a donkey but gives you amazing insight from a Southern Italian who has grown up in the area. A fabulous day with flexibility- we stopped whenever we wanted for photos & shopping etc. and he tailored the tour to our requests as we went along.

In Rome, we trained into the city (which was a direct train- see http://www.europeportreviews.com/ if you're interested in doing it yourself. I pre-booked tickets to the Vatican Museum on http://www.rome-museum.com/vatican2ind.php (and skipped the queue, but you must be on time.) We then trained to the Colloseum and walked the rest- you can buy maps everywhere. I liked the freedom of not being tied to a tour group and a lot of the time, for a tenth of the price, we kept bumping into our ship's tour group in the Vatican.

In Florence, it was a bit harder to find the train station so would recommend you taxi to it in Livorno. We trained in and just walked around looking at buildings and eating. By our third big day we were pretty tired so spent a lot of time in cafes drinking coffee and eating pasta and gelato. I was glad we hadn't prebooked museum tickets etc because we were growing a bit weary of beatiful cathedrals and walking.

With Malta and Villefranche I'm glad we never planned anything. I didn't anticipate how exhausting the tours/big ports would be and in Villefranche we were happy to go off the ship for 3 hours then come back for a sleep. We thought Malta was beautiful and it was very easy to catch a public bus into the town (1 euro) and walk around on our own. The view from the Upper Barraka Gardens was amazing and again we bumped into the organised tours!