Shore Excursion help for Morocco and Canary Islands

[btt726]

I will be cruising to Casablanca and several stops in the canary islands Jan 13-24. I need help picking shop excursions. Would like to do something that is not through NCL because of price.  I am unable to rent a car and drive around. We enjoy seeing historical sites and hiking. Itinerary is below. Thanks!!

1/15 Casablanca: 

1/17 Lanzarote, Canary Islands 

1/18 Las Palmas, Canary Islands 

1/19 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands 

1/20 Funchal, Madeira 

1/22Granada (Malaga), Spain 

1/23Alicante, Spain 

[roothy123]

In Funchal, there were plenty of taxi cab drivers at the pier offering tours.  If you can find another couple people to share, you could enjoy a half day tour for not all that much money.  That's what we did.  I forget the name of the company or driver we booked (in advance), but if you're interested, I can look at my online photo gallery to find his name.  There is also a Hop On Hop Off bus in Funchal if you like that sort of thing.   You might also find some good info in tomsportguides.com - he has a Funchal guide that has good ideas, and he occasionally recommends a reasonable, private tour guide in his guides. 

 

Malaga is a nice city, but if you want to go to the Alhambra, I'd suggest pre-booking a guide.  I can look up the name of the one we used.  It was a small bus tour, but decent both in quality and price.  However, it was from Motril, not Malaga, so I don't know if it's offered from Malaga as well.  In Malaga, I just took a public bus, did some walking, and made my own excursion!

 

 

Edited December 7, 2018 by roothy123

[the mice]

Just returned from an Oceania cruise to some of these ports.    Through our Roll Call we arranged some private group tours and the prices were super reasonable.

 

Lanzarote, Canary Islands -  we booked a private group excursion through ExcursionsLanzarote.com with "Crazy David" but you can also book direct with him.  His company is adventureholidayslanzarote.com.    Highly recommend him - everyone in our group was very happy with him and the tour.

 

Las Palmas, Canary Islands -  this was a challenge at first, but we booked a private excursion with Viajes Pamir.   www.viajespamir.com     My contact was Manuel Negro    manuelnegro@viajespamir.com     You can mention that Mrs. Berman referred you to him.   He was super helpful and very responsive.   Did require a deposit, but arranged for paying it by credit card, and the tour was fantastic, with a brand new roomy minibus and an English speaking guide in addition to the driver since we were 10.   Our group loved it.   They also do private taxi tours if you are only 2 (or 4) - the taxi drivers don't speak too much English but they have recorded tour information.    I was told by many companies that the taxi drivers don't speak much English here. 

 

Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands -  did a tour with Spain Day Tours.   They run a great operation.   Unfortunately, we had planned to go to Mt. Tiede but snow closed all the roads so they had to do something different - they made the best of a bad situation, but the tour we ended up with wasn't as interesting to me. The weather where we went was wonderful - sunny and reasonably mild.  In January, there will probably be more snow, so plan accordingly.  Some other people on our cruise went to the north of the island and said their tour was fantastic.   You can look for options on their website and contact them directly.  They are very responsive.

 

Funchal, Madeira - we did a private group tour with Madeira Island Tours - it was great.  Fantastic scenery.   We all loved it, and our guide/driver Gregory was terrific.   Very inexpensive, too. 

 

Malaga - we did our own exploring here.  There are many options and lots of things to see - Alcazaba, Gibralfaro, Cathedral (with a rooftop visit), Picasso Museum,  the Central Market of Atarazanas, the Motor Museum/Fashion Museum.    We didn't get to all of them.  

 

Hope this helps and hope you love the Canaries as much as we did.   Happy Cruising.

 

 

[RickCanada]

On 11/30/2018 at 2:12 PM, btt726 said:

I will be cruising to Casablanca and several stops in the canary islands Jan 13-24. I need help picking shop excursions. Would like to do something that is not through NCL because of price.  I am unable to rent a car and drive around. We enjoy seeing historical sites and hiking. Itinerary is below. Thanks!!

1/15 Casablanca: 

1/17 Lanzarote, Canary Islands 

1/18 Las Palmas, Canary Islands 

1/19 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands 

1/20 Funchal, Madeira 

1/22Granada (Malaga), Spain 

1/23Alicante, Spain 

 

Hi BT:  I am also on that cruise.  Why don't you join the roll call for "Norwegian Spirit, January 13, 2019"?  We will be having a meet and greet and there are already 50 people signed up.  People have arranged tours of which you could join.

Edited January 5, 2019 by RickCanada

[lamchops]

On 11/30/2018 at 11:12 AM, btt726 said:

I will be cruising to Casablanca and several stops in the canary islands Jan 13-24. 

1/15 Casablanca: 

1/17 Lanzarote, Canary Islands 

1/18 Las Palmas, Canary Islands 

1/19 Santa Cruz de Tenerife, Canary Islands 

1/20 Funchal, Madeira 

1/22Granada (Malaga), Spain 

1/23Alicante, Spain 

I will be on the same cruise right after yours. We attempted this itinerary last year at the same time and NCL cancelled all of the Canary Islands due to weather. The ports substituted were fantastic so we thought we’d give it another shot.

 

Casablanca,  take a ship’s excursion ( people complained about Rick’s cafe) 

 

Malaga, the ship docks very close to town and you can do you own walking tour with Google maps. We stayed there 2 days precruise so it was leasurely. We did hike up to the castle and back as well as visiting the market and sites in town. On port day we prebooked the “ Soul of Andulucia” tour and while it was good we were disappointed that our tour didn’t go inside the Alahambra. There was a tour available onboard for that. It was expensive but we saw what we wanted in town precruise.

 

Alicante, The port stop is not that long but there wasn’t much that interested me that I wanted to pay big bucks for. We decided to DIY to the castle so we walked the promenade to the main street and turned right. About 100 yards along the street by the beach you will get to a bus stop. You can take the bus or cross  the street to an elevator  that takes you to the top. The elevator was out of order so the city provided a free shuttle. There are lots of cafes along the boardwalk for free WiFi.

 

fyi, the replacement ports were:

tangiers, Cartagena, Mallorca, marseille 

Edited January 12, 2019 by lamchops

[fabnfortysomething]

companies we used

 

Gran Canaria  Bruno from tripgrancaria

 

Tenerife John Reid from tenerifeprivatetours or tours by locals

 

Madeira hit the road jeep tour with Jeff