Splendour Med Reviews - 5/14/05 cruise

[JMTtor]

Coming soon! :)

[egdr22]

We leave the day after tomorrow for our pre cruise Rome stay. We board the Brilliance on Sunday! Looking forward to reading your reviews! :)

[JMTtor]

This is it – the first installment of my long-overdue review of our trip to Spain, France, and Italy for the May 15th 2005 sailing of Royal Caribbean’s Splendour of the Seas. I’ll be posting these installments over a week or two, and there may be a few revisions from time to time after we watch all the video we shot and look through the several hundred photos. Ultimately, I'll have it all on a website, and I'll provide the link when that's available. For those interested, this was my fifteenth cruise (first Med cruise) and my 11th on Royal Caribbean.

 

Mediterranean Cruise Travel Tips

Starting off, I’ve included a few tips for travelers embarking on similar journeys. Though some of these are gleaned solely from our own experiences, most are things we learned from a combination of pre-trip research, both on the Internet and from reading a number of extremely helpful books, which I’ve listed in the bibliography to this review. The recommendations are solely my own, and others may have different and even contradictory recommendations – but these are things that worked for us. Read them over, consider your own research and experience, use the ones that may be helpful, and forget the rest!

 

1. Read as much as you can about your ports of call before you go; decide what interests you the most, and plan your days accordingly. Even though you’ll have 12 hours in most ports (with 15 in Villefranche), with the major sightseeing destinations anywhere from a half-hour to 90 minutes from the port, your touring time will generally be limited to a maximum of ten hours. You’ll be visiting some of Europe’s most beautiful places, with some of the world’s most outstanding art and architecture. A week in most of these places won’t give you the time to see all of the things that might interest you, let alone less than a full day. Careful planning before you go will pay off in a minimum of wasted time when you’re there. The various cruise reviews on the Cruise Critic website were a great help, especially the very comprehensive review written by LuvToTravel of her Med cruise in May 2004 (To read Luv to Travel’s complete Mediterranean cruise reviews, go to post #1 in the following thread: http://boards.cruisecritic.com/showthread.php?t=130319).

 

The Eyewitness Top Ten Travel Guides published by DK, http://www.dk.com, are available from most booksellers for virtually any major destination around the world. I’ve found them to be excellent for both domestic and foreign travel, and this trip was no exception; they were invaluable tools in identifying places and things of interest. Organized by topics, they list the editors’ picks for the “ten best” in each location (including a great “Streetsmart” section). Best of all, they’re compact enough to carry along when you go. Also, Rick Steves’ Best of Europe 2005 contained many helpful descriptions of specific areas plus a number of walking tour suggestions for different destinations. Finally, Anne Vipond’s Mediterranean by Cruise Ship has great historical and cultural information on the region, as well as general cruising hints for the trip. And Frommer’s, Fodor’s, Insight, and Lonely Planet guides are always worth a look. All of these were useful in planning what to see and how to attack the touring in our major destinations.

 

2. Try to adjust yourself to the time difference gradually the week before you go. Barcelona (like most of the Mediterranean ports) is six hours ahead of US East Coat time, seven for the Midwest, eight for the Rockies, and a whopping nine hours for the West Coasters. That means major jet lag if you’re not prepared. I follow the recommendations of most travel authorities: try to go to bed an hour or two earlier than your customary time each day the week before you travel, if you are able, and get up an hour or two earlier as well. Drink plenty of water, try to minimize caffeine, and stay away from carbonated beverages. I also buy an all-natural preparation from Magellan’s travel (http://www.magellan.com) called “No-Jet-Lag” (info at http://www.nojetlag.com) that is supposed to help prevent the problem. It seems to help me; whether it’s a placebo effect or real, who knows? But I figure anything that seems to help is worth it.

 

3. Get on the cruise boards as soon as you know your date to exchange information with others who’ve done the trip before, or who will be on your sailing. There are lots of great discussion threads, including threads dedicated to specific ports with reviews of tours (both those run by the cruise line and those run by independent operators). You’ll save time and aggravation by being prepared for things before you go.

 

If you’re going to do the private tours-on-your-own route, make certain you’re very clear about your preferences in what you do and don’t want to see when you look for others to join you. We were fortunate to have a core group of six of us who got along extremely well for all four tours; we added two more to the group for two of the four days, and that also worked well.

 

(continued in next post)

[JMTtor]

4. To maximize your time, increase your comfort, and save some cash, use a reputable independent tour operator from the local area rather than the cruise line’s shore excursions whenever possible. We took only one cruise-line operated shore excursion, a trip to Salon de Provence from Marseilles (a disappointing trip for reasons I’ll explain in my review of that port). In all four other ports we opted to prearrange private tours through operators we selected through recommendations from the Cruise Critic boards, and we found from four to six other fellow cruisers to share the trip each time. Why private tours versus the ship or going it alone? Several reasons:

 

• Instead of a large bus or taking chances on taxis and public transport, each tour we took was in a comfortable air-conditioned van with a knowledgeable driver/guide who tailored the trip to what the group was most interested in seeing.

• With the ship’s tours, you are confined to a limited number of destinations (generally only one or two areas), and you most often are led into a tourist-trap shopping destination at some point. With private tours, the operator will most likely suggest an agenda, but you are able to tailor it to your own interests. If you want more time in a specific place, you can have it; if you want to skip the parfumerie or cameo factory that takes up precious time on the ship-run tours, you won’t have to stop there.

• Because of the larger size of the busses and the limited number of train or bus stops, you are frequently dropped off at some distance from the main attractions, meaning you may use up valuable chunks of your limited time in walking to your chosen sites (not to mention possibly getting lost on the way). With the smaller vans, you are generally able to get much closer to where you want to go, giving you more time to see and do what you came on your trip to see and do. Europe’s public transport is much better than in most US locales, but gaps in the train and bus schedules, plus the frequent strikes and some breakdowns, mean you will spend time sitting and waiting when you could be DOING.

• Private tours can be much less expensive than the ship’s tours! The MOST expensive private tour we took was in Villefranche. It cost us 110 Euros per person (about $146 US at the mid-May ‘05 exchange rate) for six of us, and we spent ten nonstop hours seeing more of the French Riviera than I would have thought possible: driving all three corniches (seaside drives) between Monaco and Nice, visiting (by our choice) a lovely little place in Nice that makes candied fruits and flowers (http://www.confisserie-florian.com), stopping at an open-air market in Antibes, spending time in Cannes to stroll about the film festival, walking the streets in the lovely St. Paul-de-Vence and in Eze, visiting La Turbie to see the Roman monument and the breathtaking view over the ocean, driving the full Grand Prix route through Monte Carlo, and seeing the evening changing of the guard at the palace in Monaco. The ship’s tours that day cost $155 US per person for the bus tours, limited to one or two destination points – and the ship-offered private van tour checked in at a hefty $345 US per person! There were people who did their own thing in Villefranche, using public transportation (trains and busses) to tour. While that may be less expensive, you’ll also spend time waiting on the scheduled runs, and hiking from the bus stops or train stations to the places you want to see.

 

5. Don’t bother changing dollars for Euros in the US before you go; use your bank’s ATM card at cash machines (or use a VISA or MasterCard) and you will get excellent exchange rates. This is something else I checked on the web before going, and most financial and travel experts were unanimous in this advice. After my return, I checked the exchange rate on the ATM slips from the communities against the ‘net currency converter tables and found that the rates I got from withdrawing Euros at the ATMs – widely available in all the larger cities we visited – was actually MORE favorable than the mid-range rates on the Internet (example: the XE currency converter gave a median rate of 1.33 dollars to the Euro while my ATM transactions gave me rates ranging from 1.22 to 1.25). You can also change money on board the ship, but the exchange rate there was higher at 1.35 dollars per Euro (but still better than paying a sizable fee to buy Euros in the US before you depart!). Check with your bank or credit union about the system you're on. Our credit union is both PLUS and CIRRUS, both of which most European banks accept.

 

6. Many merchants, restaurants, museums, and transportation providers accept credit cards, particularly VISA and MasterCard; when that is the case, take advantage of it! I pay off my credit card bills each month, so I paid no interest on credit transactions for my vacation purchases – ranging from paying for one of the private tours to paying for a taxi ride in Barcelona (yes, the drivers there accept credit cards – see the signs on the rear window of the cabs!). The exchange rate is again very favorable, and it saves you from carrying large amounts of cash that can be subject to the various rip-off artists who congregate in high tourist traffic areas. Which leads to my next tip:

 

7. Don’t put all your eggs in one basket – and don’t put all of your valuables in one bag! I’d suggest not putting your valuables into ANY bag that you are not attaching to your person in some way; one large group on our ship apparently found this out the hard way when the one bag into which they had stowed all passports, cash, and air tickets was surreptitiously stolen while they waited for someone to meet them on the street in Barcelona – they didn’t even notice it was gone until they picked up their remaining luggage. My daughter and I each carried our own passports and credit cards, and we each had a copy of the e-ticket for our flights. I carried most of my important items (cards, cash, and passport) in a waist wallet that I purchased several years ago from Magellan’s (http://www.magellan.com). It’s a thin fabric pocket with two zippered pockets and two internal webbed storage areas; you attach it via an adjustable elastic strap, and you wear it under your clothing: Eagle Creek Deluxe Security Belt - Magellan's Travel Supplies. I also carried a Healthy Back Bag (http://www.ameribag.com), into which I put my video camera, printouts of compiled information on the destinations, a wallet, bottled water or iced tea, and other various items for the long days of exploration.

[JMTtor]

8. Tips on tipping: Europeans don’t tip the way US citizens do. For one thing, their restaurant staff is actually paid (unlike US servers, who depend on their tips to make a living). That being said, I still tipped at least a bit (ten percent) in most places. Cab drivers are tipped jut as in the US. For tour guides, I had read on these boards that a standard tip for a tour guide is about ten percent of the tour price. We tipped more in general, since all of our tour guides were very good, with three of the four being exceptional. Hand the cash tip directly to your driver at the end of the trip, preferably in Euros.

 

9. Payment for tours: There is no uniform rule; contact your chosen tour company and ask! Some companies accept credit cards; others accept cash only. We paid most of our drivers in Euros at the end of the trip.

 

Private Tour experiences

Now the capsule private tour summary (I’ll have more in the detailed reviews on each port). In order of ports of call, our driver/guides were:

 

• Frederic of Dream Tours (http://www.dream-tours.com) gave us an unbelievable day from Villefranche - we saw and did more than I ever could have hoped for, and Frederic was a true delight! Nice, Antibes (don't miss the open-air farmers' market), Cannes, St. Paul de Vence, La Turbie, Eze, Monaco, and Monte Carlo. The little tour of the candymaker in Nice, Confiserie Florian (http://www.confiserieflorian.com/visitus.htm) was charming (specialty chocolates, candied fruits, and candied flowers are the products). We happened into the evening changing of the guard at the palace in Monaco; the area was deserted (in the daytime it is apparently impossible to get a good view).

• Paolo, our driver/guide provided through Claudio (http://www.limoinrome.com) for Florence and Pisa, was extremely knowledgeable and a complete gentleman in every way. He knew how and when to bypass the crowds for the best access to most places in the city, and he brings an added benefit: a visit to a beautiful castle connected to his family on the way to Florence was an unexpected highlight of the day! The incredible restaurant he suggested for lunch, Il Latini, is another experience not to be missed!

• Daniele (Italian masculine for "Daniel"; "Danielle" is the French feminine!!) for Rome (http://www.driverinrome.com - note he's cut his hair since the website photos, but he's still very recognizable from the pictures!) showed us more of Rome in one day than I saw on a three-week visit when I was much younger; he knew the best times to visit everything and the best places to buy everything from souvenirs to gelato (and the most incredible pizza in town!). He was a fount of historical information, and his sense of humor kept us laughing most of the day, too!

• Marco, sent from http://www.DriveAmalfi.com, was our driver from Naples for Pompeii and the Amalfi coast. He was a wonderful driver and very amiable, and he also displayed a wealth of knowledge about the area. He was a bit difficult to understand at times, but he was very eager to please everyone. Our day was turned around a bit by one of Italy's ubiquitous transportation strikes, which made Pompei our final destination rather than the starting point. Despite that change of plans, we were still able to see Sorrento, Positano, Ravello, and Amalfi, plus many beautiful points between them, and still have two hours in Pompeii.