Staying overnight in Rome and then heading to Florence ?

We have a cruise coming up this summer and on 19th we are in Rome and 20th we are in Florence .

Since neither port is directly at those cities we thought about just not getting back on board on the Rome day and taking an hour train in the morning to Florence . Then heading back on board our ship at the end of the Florence day.

Is this a bad idea? It is a shorter train trip over (vs Livorno to Florence)and would give us the ability to see Rome in the evening. However I’m worried about the not getting back on board for one night. Would the cruise ship be upset with us or fine us?

We could secure lodging for the night in Rome and I am aware of the extra cost but the freedom would be worth it.

We have a cruise coming up this summer and on 19th we are in Rome and 20th we are in Florence .

 

Since neither port is directly at those cities we thought about just not getting back on board on the Rome day and taking an hour train in the morning to Florence . Then heading back on board our ship at the end of the Florence day.

 

Is this a bad idea? It is a shorter train trip over (vs Livorno to Florence)and would give us the ability to see Rome in the evening. However I’m worried about the not getting back on board for one night. Would the cruise ship be upset with us or fine us?

 

We could secure lodging for the night in Rome and I am aware of the extra cost but the freedom would be worth it.

It is doable as a couple did this on a cruise I was on - just make sure to inform your cruise line. I'm not sure what you mean by "taking an hour train in the morning to Florence" as Florence is about 1.5 hours away by train. You could take an early morning train and be in Florence before the cruise hoards arrive. :)

I think it makes perfect sense and is a much better use of your time. Obviously there is a financial cost, but time is also a precious and limited commodity on vacation and you'd save a lot of it with your plan.

It is doable as a couple did this on a cruise I was on - just make sure to inform your cruise line. I'm not sure what you mean by "taking an hour train in the morning to Florence" as Florence is about 1.5 hours away by train. You could take an early morning train and be in Florence before the cruise hoards arrive. :)

Yes you’re right. But the idea of being their early is very alluring. So would I just inform them once on board?

No, you get the cruise line's approval in advance, in writing. They aren't going to fine you, but, of course, they aren't going to discount your fare, and you are responsible for the extra costs involved.

It is not an uncommon request but you should make sure you have the agreement in advance from your cruise line to do it.

Also -- don't forget to bring your passports with you as they are required to be presented upon check-in at hotels in Italy.

Very good advice from all :). Just make sure to notify the cruise line (either directly of via your cruise/travel agent) far in advance of the trip. Each line handles these requests in their own way. For example, we recently requested a night off a Princess ship (in Japan) and had to submit the request in writing (via our cruise agent). About 10 days later Princess e-mailed us a detailed approval with instructions to notify the Purser....once aboard the ship. We are aware of one other cruise line that now charges a fee for this type of request :(. Princess call the procedure a "Request For Deviation From Scheduled Cruise Itinerary."

They do make it clear that the passenger is responsible to catch up to the ship in the event the ship misses the port :). With the ports of Civitavecchia and Livorno....missing a port is very unlikely, We think the deviation (spending a night in either Rome or Florence) is a great idea for those that do not get a chance to travel within Italy.

Hank

Thanks to everyone for the advice. I’m going to investigate notifying RCI

I would not say don't do it - but, we did miss the port of Livorno (coming from Rome) in 2013 due to high winds.

We did this in reverse. We left the ship in LIvorno and caught up with it in Civitavecchia. We had approval from Celebrity ahead of time.

The evening before they will leave a message for you to bring your passports to the front desk as they will be needed for the port authorities when the ship docks. You pick them up there before going ashore. When we did this there were about six other couples doing the same thing.

When reboarding your key card will notify security that you have been off the ship. You might have to wait a few minutes at security until someone comes down to clear you.

We had a plan B if the ship did not port in Civitavecchia for whatever reason. In our case, the next stop was Naples...which would be just another train ride to catch the ship.

As an update to this in case someone reads it later.

We paid $65 to royal Caribbean back in March to get the downlink approval emailed me to us to get off in Rome and come back the next day in Livorno.

I was assured that the crew would be informed of our request approval and that’s what I was paying for.

When I showed it to guest services on board they looked at me like they had no idea what I was talking about and kept assuming we wanted to get off for good in Rome. All the paperwork they sent to our stateroom gave the impression they though we were NOT returning.

Our stateroom steward was shocked that we weren’t getting back on board. We made every effort to clarify to him and his boss(just happened to see him in the hall at the same time) that we were returning the next day in Livorno.

I took the paperwork back down to guest services and they said they had to call their own manager to make sure it was fine. The manager said it should be okay and that the security team would be informed. We had to leave our passports with guest services the night before Rome and pick them up before we departed in Rome.

The security guy saw our cards were deactivated and thought he needed to take our sea pass cards. I said that we were getting back on board tomorrow and we needed the cards to get through security and that we should have new ones waiting on us (this is what guest services told us). He called because he had not been informed of our situation and after a quick call he handed me back my card and wished us good luck.

Now. Rome. Was totally f’ing worth it.

Because of our new flexibility and prepurchasing of tickets we were able to quickly get into Rome and headed into the colosseum and went to the lasagna church before walking to the pantheon, having a look around, into another church to see Michelangelo’s Moses and then walking to the Vatican. We had reservations at 3 for the Vatican and got the audio tour. The Vatican was not as packed as i had been led to believe but still very busy. We were able to check out a few areas and then decided to make our way to the Sistine chapel( our goal) we stayed in the Sistine chapel for about 45 minutes and just took it all in.

Afterwards (while everyone else was headed back to civitavecchi) we went to this awesome pizza place with a 30 minute wait(was insanely well worth the wait) got amazing gelato and went to check out the trevi fountain before heading Back to our hotel.

We walked 13.5 miles that day. Never felt rushed though and got to have an awesome dinner surrounded by friendly Romans and woke up the next day refreshed and headed via train to florence. The train was about $150usd for the three of us. And we got into florence before the people from our boat could get there so we took in the sights in relative comfort and again got amazing gelato from the Lindt store near the Duomo.

Afterwards we took the train to Pisa because my son wanted to eat pizza in front of the leaning tower. And then headed back to Livorno to meet the boat.

We took a taxi from the Livorno train station and made it through almost all security and when we told them we left yesterday and came back. They had no friggin idea what we were talking about. And again they had to call and get new sea pass cards made for us. They were not waiting for us and no one was informed to expect it like we were told. But they did their best to listen when we had to explain it (which we did a few times) and were impressed that we made it back to the boat. Lol.

So all in all if you want to do it. It seems possible. Just bring your paperwork and be calm when explaining it. It all worked out and none of them are mad at us for leaving. And then night we were gone was comped gratuity wise which basically covered the extra fee we paid.

It was 100% worth the extra 15 minutes total of hassle with security to get it done.

It is not an uncommon request but you should make sure you have the agreement in advance from your cruise line to do it.

 

 

 

Also -- don't forget to bring your passports with you as they are required to be presented upon check-in at hotels in Italy.

Yes this was definitely the case!

We have done this twice while sailing on Carnival. We notified guest services when we boarded and the day before we arrived in Livorno we had to bring our passports back down to guest services. We were told to pick the passports back up just before we left the ship. Having the freedom and time in Florence and Rome were fantastic and the food and wine were great as well. Just an FYI we had trouble getting a taxi from the Civitavechia train station back to the port. One time we walked from the train station back to the port (stopping for a glass of wine on the way). Then took the bus from the entrance to the ship.

Don't hesitate doing this you will be happy you did.