NCteacherlovescruising

I'll ask you both the same question, if we miss our flight are they responsible for getting us on another?

We are looking at several different options. I hadn't thought of Madrid. Thank you! If we do this, would you suggest staying in Madrid for a day or 2 first? The cheapest flight there is on the 9th, so that gives us an extra day to spend there or in Barcelona. (Since the 9th is a Sunday dh wouldn't have to take an extra day of PTO so not a big deal) I think we will have enough time in Barcelona getting there on the 11th. I'm writing down all our options and when dh is done working today we are going to look over them. I believe we can book now with miles and cancel later if we find a better rewards offer at a later time.

Searching flights to Europe. We live in Charlotte. We are looking at flights from here, but also other states that we could fly (or drive) to first and then fly from there. Is 2-3 hours sufficient for a connecting flights from JFK or ORD to either London or Barcelona?

No, NCL only allows 2 days deviation. We only have enough miles for one way flights anyway.

What would be the minimum amount of time for a layover at LHR?

We are cruising with two different cruise lines. We want to book our flights there ourselves so we can control them. On the way home we’re using NCL air.

Yes, we are looking at various options. At this point, I need to sit down with paper and pencil and write them down. We plan to fly out on June 10th or so (we have flexibility because of the weekend), for a cruise out of Barcelona on the 13th. What I mean is we don’t want to fly like sardines in economy. Dh thinks PE would be sufficient but I would prefer business so I could get some sleep. I don’t think I could sleep sitting up, although perhaps I could because I will be taking Ativan just to get through takeoff. If I thought I could sleep in PE that would be fine.

Yes, I have heard from several sources that won’t work. Why on earth do they even offer it? If we fly out of JFK, we will fly there a day prior. Thanks! I will check it out. We would love to fly business class there as well. I don’t know if we will have enough miles to do so. With the searches I’ve done so far, it looks like we can only do that with crappy connections. I don’t care how NCL gets us home. I can recover at home. I just want to be common the flight there. I doubt we will go back but thanks for the heads up! I looked into that but it’s very expensive currently. We have considered flying direct to London, however, spending the day touring, and flying to Barcelona the next day. We will have to handle our luggage on trains throughout our trip. We are doing two different cruises with land in between and navigating luggage in Venice! 🤪

Was this a reply to me? If so, we are planning on getting to Barcelona on the 11th for a cruise on the 13th. My comment about leaving a day early was if we were to fly direct to London, we would leave home a day earlier so we would still arrive in Barcelona on the 11th. We always travel with multiple credit cards just in case.

I had been thinking I’d need to get mine done on the Pearl. We will be in Europe a little over a month next summer-Celebrity cruise, land, then the Pearl. Of course I will get them done before we leave but they will need filled before we get home. I just assumed I’d be able to do it on the ship. If that’s an issue I can do it in while we’re in Rome or Amalfi but I hate to waste time in such a beautiful place sitting in a nail salon.

I canceled this yesterday. We had a lot of OBC but booked X excursions for every port to use it, except the overnight in Livorno. We had a bit left for this port, but mostly paid cash. Transportation was our main reason for booking it as well. Now I’m considering rebooking it. Did you feel like you missed out on anything doing this excursion?

Based on feedback in the Celebrity group, we decided to cancel the X excursion to Florence. Now we’re back to a private excursion or diy. It sounds like the only issue with diy is getting from the port to the train station and vice versa. Are there always taxis at the train station to bring us back? I believe it was cruisemom that suggested offering a taxi driver €25 to drive us to the train station, which is fine. But what about getting back? Another option I just thought it is to skip Florence from Livorno. They are many cheap options for private shore excursions. We could go to Pisa and Lucca or Pisa and Florence, Pisa and the beach. Then do a day trip from Rome while staying there. Would this be easier? (FYI, we are staying in Rome 5 nights)

We weren’t going to shortchange it. We were going to leave a day early, if we do it. All flights from Charlotte to Barcelona go through there and most also go through JFK, Atlanta, Philly or LaGuardia. We’re worried they would lose our luggage with 2 or 3 stops. The idea of a direct flight is appealing. We’re just tossing around options. We’ve been told if we wait till November or so we may get better prices on more premium seats. 🤷‍♀️ We know it’s a gamble, but since we’ve never flown to Europe we have no idea when is the best time to buy. Also, if it’s much more expensive we wouldn’t do it. As for LHR, we can’t avoid it. Even flying to Barcelona from here, we have to change planes at LHR. If it’s that bad, it may be easier if we didn’t have to make a connecting flight. The thought of all those takeoffs is terrifying!

This is something I hadn’t thought about. Thanks for asking! I’ve read most places will take credit cards but some of our private excursions will only take cash. I need to figure out how much cash we will need and try not to have much more than that. We’ve also been talking about flying into London instead of Barcelona since we could could get a direct flight, take a day to tour the city, then fly to Barcelona the next day. But that would involve yet another currency.

I have to admit we were all Game of Thrones fans and have talked about doing an excursion to see the places used for filming. We will most likely do a private excursion though.

If we were going there both days, I would go to Uffizi. Given a choice between the two, I’d prefer Accademia. The primary reason I want a tour is just getting there without hassle. We will be there in June. If the lines to go inside Santa Croce are long we would skip it, otherwise we will go in. I do plan on rubbing the nose and trying the coin. Lol

Did you have enough time to see all the major places, besides the Uffizi Museum?

We will be in a sunset sky suite on deck 11 and the pole is by the bed. I rarely get up at night so I will sleep on that side. I don’t think it will be an issue.

I have and they have been extremely helpful! Thank you. My intent here was to see if anyone had done this Celebrity excursion and if so, were the Accademia tickets included. We liked this one because it hit about everything we wanted to see, including the Accademia, which is a high priority. We figured we could do it day 2 when we have to be back on the ship by 5. I found an excursion I like and posted it in our roll call.

You said they got you skip the line tickets for the museum. Accademia, right? That’s the one we want to see.

Sounds nice! Hopefully we can get a couple to join us to cut down on the cost. We have a private excursion the other day there that goes to Siena and a wine tasting so we would do the one without the tasting with Papillon.

Thanks for posting this! We will be in Rome next summer on the Equinox so this is just building my anticipation! Are Uber prices there comparable to here?

I’m sure we will. I put some feelers out there but so far nobody has expressed any interest at all. Originally it was La Spezia, but they changed it to Livorno.

Celebrity wants $105 for a train transfer and only gives us 4 hours to explore on our own. We’d pay it if they let us stay longer. That’s true. We’ve done those before. I guess if we don’t do Celebrity, I was hoping for it to be in the 2-8 range so we’d have more input on what we see. However, I did read this feedback to him and he agreed we should cancel and look at private options. I really want to see a few things in Florence and none of the group tours hit them all. I wish there were an easy way to get there to Florence. It looks easy to diy once you’re there.

Well crud. Private excursions are expensive and it seems difficult to get to the train. I finally got dh to sit down over the weekend to finalize our plans for the two days there. We agreed to one private excursion but thought this x excursion seemed adequate. We especially liked that it seemed to hit the major places we wanted to see and would give us until the last minute to get back on the ship. I will speak with him again.