Grand Mediterranean cruise on the Grand 2005

[queeng]

My DH and I are booked on the Grand for the Venice to Barcelona tour Oct. 2005. I was hoping to get feedback from some of you who have already done this cruise. What tour did you do through the cruise line (if any), which on own? Where did you use private tours or drivers? What worked for you what didn’t? Any and all advice will be welcome. I know it is a bit early to get so excited but ….oh well what can you do!

 

I posted this to the Princess board but go tno response. Try ,try again. I am really interested in where we should use a private tour driver and where we don't need one. There are only the two of us and do private tour people just do 2 people? I did look up some of the names I have already gotten from this board but can't really tell. I can't book the pre hotel until I get the air portion together, so I thought working on the touring would be a start.

Mahalo again,

Ginger

[usavvy2]

I believe 2005 is the first time the grand is doing a Med itinerary? What's the itinerary - perhaps those of us on other Princess ships could tell you what we did if our ports match up.

[cruisingmimi]

We did the Grand Venice to Barcelona in '99 but ours was a transatlantic back to Ft. Lauderdale. Unfortunately, we didn't have the best of weather. Rained a lot, but it was mild. The transatlantic crossing was great, sunny all the time. Made up for the rain in Europe. We flew from Boston to Switzerland, then to Venice. Met the ship there. We arrived the afternoon (about 1:30 pm) of the ship's departure. Didn't give us much time to see Venice. We did manage to take a gondola ride. It was awesome! The sailaway from Venice was wonderful, especially on the Grand. It was at that time the biggest ship afloat. Quite impressive to see it sailing out of Venice. We went to Florence and took the ship's bus tour. Visited David ( a must see!) & the cathedrals, had a nice lunch in the square, then browsed through the shops. We passed by Pisa but it was not a scheduled stop on our tour. We were able to get a good view of it though. Did some photo stops along the way.

 

Went to Naples & we chose the Pompei tour (again we booked through the ship). We enjoyed Pompei very much. Very interesting, had a fantastic tour guide! Then we saw Mt. Vesuvius, stopped at a cameo shop (a total waste of time), then back to the ship. Some people opted to do a tour to Rome but it was an overnight & it was pricey for just one night.

 

Some of the tours got cancelled because of the weather. Went by the Rock of Gilbralta but it was quite foggy so didn't really see that much of it. We were scheduled to dock in Monaco but it was too rough so we had to go to Nice, then they tendered us to Monaco. Monaco was truly beautiful. We loved that tour. Went to the church where Princess Grace is buried, went inside & saw where she was buried in the church, toured the castle, that was very interesting. Had a few minutes to do some shopping, then back on the bus. Took a bus ride around Monaco, viewed the spot where Princess Grace was killed in her auto accident.

 

We were unable to stop at the Azores, again because of the rough seas. Did a bus tour of Portugual, stopped to do some shopping in one of the villages. Portgual is very pretty (at least what we saw).

 

While in Italy, we were shuttled to the Isle of Capri, the view was breathtaking at the top. Again, it was misting so we bought umbrellas in Capri, did some store browsing, had a nice lunch in the restaurant, yummy pasta. We were also supposed to go to Sorrento but that trip was cancelled because they had a mudslide there.

 

Last stop was Barcelona, we elected to just walk around. Walked down the Rumbly, watched the performers for a while, did some souvenir shopping, then back to the ship. At that point we were tired of sightseeing. Our friends had been there before.

 

We had very rough seas while we were cruising the Med. You could really feel the motion even on the Grand! A lot of people were sick. I always tell people they should bring some dramamine if they mind motion. They did sell ginger in the store onboard ship but I don't know if that helped or not. Probably didn't because it was pretty rocky onboard. They advised everyone not to walk around too much.

 

Then it was back across the Atlantic to Ft. Lauderdale. So all in all, we got pretty short-changed on our port stops. I was very disappointed because it was our first trip to the Mediterranean. Princess didn't offer any perks for not being able to do the tours.

 

The tours we did get to do were satisfactory, we had excellent tour guides. However, now that I've been there once, I would not hesitate to book my own private tours. I think you get more bang for your buck. The board has some excellent guides that people have used.

 

It was still a wonderful trip in spite of the weather. I would not hesitate to go back.

 

Hope this helps. I have been recapping from memory. I will see if I can find my brochures but we have moved since the cruise & I don't know where they are!

 

Let me know if you need any other info. You will have a wonderful trip. The only thing I would really recommend is that you get to Venice the day before the ship departs so you will have time to browse around. We wished we had more time in Venice.

[queeng]

12-day Grand Mediterranean cruise sailing from Venice to Barcelona featuring the best of the Mediterranean. Includes: Venice (overnight), Athens, Ephesus, Istanbul, Mykonos, Naples/Capri, Rome, Florence/Pisa and Marseille.

The itinerary is listed above. Any other info would be helpful

Mahalo,

Ginger

[juliejoe]

Here is a link to the review for our Grand Mediterranean cruise on the Golden Princess in June, 2001. It was wonderful!

 

Julie

 

http://www.cruisecritic.com/memberreviews/memberreview.cfm?EntryID=388

[mert461]

Crusingmimi, what month were you in the Med that it was so rainy and seas rocky?

 

Thanks,

Donna

[cruisingmimi]

Hi mert461,

 

We were there in October, just about this date! Think we just had unfortunately bad weather.

[usavvy2]

our Princess cruise ended in Civatavecchia so we had private transport to Rome (Bob's Limousine and Tours; 160euros for 2 couples w/lots of luggage from port to 2 different hotels). Driver was waiting for us 10 min. b4 scheduled pick up time; knew our hotel but not location of Crowne Plaza (obscure I think). I did think he should've researched the location BEFORE we got in the car for the ride but other than that, all was satisfactory. We did the hop on hop off bus in Rome on our first day there w/a focus on ancient Rome; worked out well. Day 2 we did religious Rome on our own. Didn't feel we needed a private guide for either but then again we had 2 days there.

 

For Florence, we took Princess "Florence Sampler" pkg which provides some time on own and some time with guide. You get bus to Florence (which is over an hour each way from Livorno). Guide explains map on way to Florence then you walk thru most of Florence. Once getting to other "end" of town, you're free for a couple of hours. We had advance tickets to see David so we walked back and spent our time there. I thought it was the best of both worlds. I guess if we had a private tour we would've gotten to Florence earlier but I didn't even consider it as I thought the Florence Sampler suited our needs just fine. (We did take a private tour in Vigo Spain so it's not as if we're opposed to it. Here's my journal entry for Florence...

 

had an opportunity to see a little bit of the beautiful Tuscan countryside with its fields of sunflowers, olive gardens and vineyards on our way to Florence, the capital of Tuscany. (Unfortunately, the sunflowers expired about a week or two before our arrival.) Even though we didn’t take the tour to Pisa, we were fortunate to be able to see it from a distance on our drive to Florence as the normal service area used on the autostrada was closed so the bus driver took an alternate route that went by Pisa. It didn’t make for a good photo opportunity but we were glad we saw it in the distance.

 

Once we arrived at the gates to Florence, we met another guide who took us on a walk through much of the town. Tour buses are not allowed in the town itself. (I can understand why with about 7M visitors a year!) We started off near the Accademia and ended our guided tour at the opposite end. We passed by the Uffizi gallery, said to be Europe’s greatest museum of Renaissance paintings, and its long line outside. We walked down very narrow streets with old buildings looming overhead and restaurants of every type throughout the town.

 

We stopped at the Piazza del Duomo (Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore), which truly is an architectural wonder – the 4th largest cathedral in the world. It was amazing to see its gorgeous pink, green and white Italian marble facade. The outside of this cathedral was absolutely breathtaking and I wished there was time to see its interior. It was the first domed structure erected in Europe since Roman times, built between 1296 and 1436! The dome was a wonder of medieval engineering but it wasn’t the first time we saw a dome like it as the design was later copied for St. Paul’s dome in London which we saw while we were in London. (The dome was also copied for St. Peter’s dome in Rome.)

 

The accompanying Campanile (bell tower) has 414 steps, provides a view of the dome. Just across the piazza is the Baptistery – octagonal in shape with massive bronze doors depicting scenes from the Old Testament. It was built between the 5th and 7th centuries and then covered with pink, green and white marble in the 11th and 13th centuries. The Baptistery serves as Florence’s oldest surviving building. The bronze doors are replicas of the real ones, which are located in the Museo dell’Opera del Duomo. There were groups of tourists in the piazza so getting a photograph of the buildings without tourists was impossible.

 

We moved on down the narrow streets to Piazza della Signoria – a square with the town hall (Palazzo Vecchio) and a replica of Michelangelo’s Statue of David as well as a fountain with a sculpture of Neptune. (Palazzo Vecchio was under renovations so scaffolding covered much of its façade.) Many other sculptures were located here as well by well-known artists such as Donatello and Bandinelli. This piazza dates back to the 13th century when the council chamber convened. This is the site where executions took place and religious fanatics preached. At one point in history it was here that the townspeople threw all their worldly possessions into a pile and watched them burn. Also in the piazza is the Loggia dei Lanzi, an open building with its statues by Cellini and Gimbologna. Scaffolding was being erected in front of Loggia dei Lanzi when we were there.

 

We walked on to the famous 14th-century covered bridge known as Ponte Vecchio with gold and silver guilds lining its banks. Goldsmiths and jewelers have been selling their wares here since 1593! This bridge was the only bridge that wasn’t destroyed by the Germans in World War II or the floods in 1966. The guide told us about the locks we saw on the walls... service men used these locks while they were in the service and, once they returned home, they came to Ponte Vecchio to throw away the key in the Arno river below as a symbol to never be called back to service again. Our final stop was at the Piazza Santa Croce. Besides shops and cafes, this piazza is the site of the Santa Croce church. (At the time we didn’t realize that the Santa Croce church is considered Florence most important church because of its many outstanding work of art as well as because Michelangelo, Galileo and Machiavelli are buried within it.)

 

When our guided tour ended, we had 2 ½ hours free time before returning to a group meeting place for the trek to the bus (at the opposite end of town than where we left it). All the narrow streets made it a little difficult to get our bearings in these charming medieval and renaissance streets but we knew we needed to walk back in the direction from which we came as we had reservations to tour the Galleria dell’Accademia which was near where we started our tour. We joined another couple and started back down the narrow streets. It began raining so we found a small restaurant with reasonable prices and ate lunch.

 

We then walked back to the Galleria dell’Accademia for a look at the world’s most important collection of Michelangelo sculptures. I had pre-reserved our tickets (~$3/pp more) so we didn’t have to wait in line, and was very glad I did that in advance. We brought another couple in with us, who hadn’t pre-reserved but was allowed to go in at the same time as us by purchasing their tickets at the window when we picked up our tickets. The Accademia isn’t all that big but what it does contain is colossal! We toured the first room with its renaissance paintings and frescoes and then moved into THE room – with Michelangelo’s David at the far end. Its grandeur was stunning and magnificent as it stood bathed in natural light streaming from the building’s dome. It took Michelangelo just 3 years to carve the stone into a masterpiece for the world to see. We saw the veins bulging in his arms and neck and his piercing eyes. We reluctantly moved on to another room full of sculpture models, all wonderful in their own right. We could see why David draws more than 1.2 million visitors a year. David was cleaned earlier this year – after a dispute by restorers as to whether he should be dry cleaned or cleaned with distilled water and mineral spirits. David – is magnificent and is a shining example of Michelangelo’s genius at the mere age of 26. On the approach to David stood other sculptures by Michelangelo in various stages of doneness.

 

After lunch, we stopped at the first place we saw selling gelato and ordered cones. Ah, yes, the gelato! I promised myself I would eat gelato every day in Italy and I was keeping my promise. I was happy.

 

By now I was getting used to the numerical system reversing commas and periods. For instance, $3.59 would be shown as $3,59 on a bill. I paid 7 euros for a man’s leather belt just outside the Accademia and 15 euros for a man’s wallet. I also purchased some Florentine paper, which was reasonably priced (~5 euros for a pack) as a souvenir for myself. (Florence is noted for its leather, fine china, linens, and gold jewelry.) Patty, our tour guide, showed us a leather jacket she bought that day – she got it for 430 euros (half price) from a shop owner she knew!

 

What we missed – the interior of the Duomo and the Baptistery, Michelangelo’s Victory in the Palazzo Vecchio, touring the world’s greatest collection of Italian Renaissance art in the Uffizi museum and gallery, a photo stop at the absolutely stunning Piazzale Michelangelo, frescoes at Palazzo Medici Riccardi, the frescoes and art at Santa Maria Novella, Italian renaissance sculpture by Michelangelo, Donatello and others at the Museo Nazionale del Bargello, Giotto’s fresco cycles at Santa Croce church, Michelangelo’s statutes in the Cappelle Medicee (Medici Chapels), photographing the Ponte Vecchio bridge from afar, rubbing the snout of the bronze boar in Mercata Nuovo, the Tuscany winery/vineyards, and the towns of Lucca and San Gimignano.

 

My impressions of Florence – you might be able to surmise just by the length of my description of Florence that I really enjoyed this place and want to return. I’m not an art connoisseur but I loved the art we saw in Florence. I appreciate architecture greatly and loved seeing the old buildings and walking in the footsteps of those who traveled these streets hundreds of years ago. I can’t wait to return!

[queeng]

It all sounds wonderful. I can't wait!!!:D