How do you get invited to the cc meet & greet?

[chloes nana]

Same thing here too. Heathrow to DEN via Cincinnati, where we cleared. Only time straight to DEN was on British Air.

 

Also, on our outbound, we had to go through security again at Heathrow before we could go to the gate to catch our Rome flight.

great! we are on British Air. Recommended by our TA as a wonderful airlines for overseas travel. Hope she is right

[chloes nana]

A good place for lunch on Las Ramblas is Egypte. Nothing fancy, but good food and they do speak English.

 

Any other ports?

 

WOW that was a great review thanks so much. Pretty much La Ramblas and La Familia Sagrada are the two big ones for Barcelona. I think these we will do on our own, and not book ships tours. It seems like you can also get around Dubrovnik pretty easily.

couple more questions. since we are novices at this and have never traveled overseas we booked the majority of our tours through the ship. We are doing a 2 day early stop in Rome before our cruise, so Rome is no problem.

our ports are:

Rome, Livorno, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Palma De Mallorca, La Goulette, Palermo, Naples, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Katakolon, Santorini, Kusadasi, Athens, and Messina. Any more suggestions? all will be greatly appreciated! Thank goodness you are only a cruise virgin once!:o

[wwinfl91]

Thanks for the thanks.

 

You asked "Also to you suggest a rookie like myself never been over seas or on a cruise, that I should stick to the ships tours??"

 

That is one of those questions that can get a lot of answers. We have done mainly private tours whenever we can for several reasons.

 

One they are usually much much smaller groups, 2 to 8 although I organized one for Lisbon that had 16 people. But even that one was much less than the typical big bus tours that the cruise lines sell. When you just take account of the extra time it takes to get on and off the buses you lose about 1/4 of the time of the tour loading and unloading the buses.

 

Generally we have been able to do private tours for about the same or a little less $'s than the ship's tours cost especially if you can find others to share your tour with. We have done that through being active on the roll call and finding private tours that we want to take and think others will want to take at the ports we are visiting. We have found many of the guides we used on the port of call boards and then did research on them on the Internet mainly. So far we haven't been disappointed totally although I will say the tour guide we used to go from Le Havre to Paris and back left something to be desired but we did see the big sites of Paris which was our goal.

 

Many times the cruise line tours don't go the places you want to see. For example we did a private tour with 3 other couples on our stop in Naples and were about to see Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Naples museum of history and archeology where most of the best finds from both of those sites are exhibited. We also got a short tour of Naples including a stop at a great stop to take pictures of the city and a stop to stock up with Italian wine to take back to the ship. There were no ship tours that offered that much and we paid less than the ones they did have that went to only to Pompeii.

 

We have taken ship's tours on occasion in ports where we felt uncomfortable arranging something on our own or where they were the only way to take the trip. An example of this was the train that goes from Colon to Panama city and back. Our ship was stopping in Colon but was not going into the Canal itself. I had read about the train trip and also about how Colon was one port not to go wandering off on your own so we did the ship's tour and it worked out fine.

 

We have occasionally just waited until we got to a port and walked off the ship and found a local taxi driver usually there are some waiting at the port and done a tour through them. We have only done this so far at ports we have been to before and we feel comfortable in. We did it on the island of St Maarten last fall. We have also just gotten off the ship and found local transportation to go to a specific site we want to see. We did this in San Juan PR recently using the free tram to see San Cristobal fortress which we had missed on previous visits.

 

Of the stops you have mentioned I would think Barcelona and Dubrovnik might opportunities to try something on your own.

 

The big advantage to ship tours is that if you are one you are assured that the ship won't leave without you. That isn't true if you use private guides or just go off on your own which means you have to be careful to leave plenty of time to get back to the ship.

 

Have a great next cruise.

[fun*n*sun]

We're doing this same cruise in May 2009. I have found tons of great information on the ports board, look under Europe, then choose Mediterranean. There is a woman who lives in Dubrovnik who posts regularly with tons of information. There is lots of info about transportation, hotels, tours and tour guides, doing it yourself. I know it's a little overwhelming trying to plan for everything especially on your first cruise, but almost all the information you could possibly need is on these boards somewhere, and if it's not here already there's usually someone who knows the answer.

 

Have a great time!

[fun_seeker]

WOW that was a great review thanks so much. Pretty much La Ramblas and La Familia Sagrada are the two big ones for Barcelona. I think these we will do on our own, and not book ships tours. It seems like you can also get around Dubrovnik pretty easily.

couple more questions. since we are novices at this and have never traveled overseas we booked the majority of our tours through the ship. We are doing a 2 day early stop in Rome before our cruise, so Rome is no problem.

our ports are:

Rome, Livorno, Monte Carlo, Barcelona, Palma De Mallorca, La Goulette, Palermo, Naples, Dubrovnik, Corfu, Katakolon, Santorini, Kusadasi, Athens, and Messina. Any more suggestions? all will be greatly appreciated! Thank goodness you are only a cruise virgin once!:o

Although you are a cruise virgin only once ;) it takes a few trips to become knowledgeable unless you are visiting the same ports again.

 

Livorno - there are several choices here. Travel to San Gemignano and Siena to see the medieval skyscrapers of Italy. San Gemignano is small and picturesque. Siena is large and has a lot to see. There might be a tour to hit both in a single day, but you can't tarry. We used a ship's tour and they did hold the ship for our return :cool: The other choice is Florence. Beautiful with museums and it is very walkable so you really need only transportation from/to the port and reservations at the museums. N.B. Museums in Europe are closed on Mondays! So, if you are in Livorno on a Monday do San Gemignano and Siena, otherwise do Florence.

 

Monte Carlo - see the casino at port level and the palace and the aquatic museum above the port.

 

Naples - the suggestion by wwinfl91 to see Pompeii, Herculaneum and the archeology museum with a private guide is good. Even better is to contact Salvatore Lucibello of http://www.DriveAmalfi.com and let him know what you want to do. He arranged transportation to the sites and also arranged a tour of Pompeii with an archeologist guide. It was one of the highlights of our trip.

 

Sicily - Don't say anything about the Mafia anywhere. They are alive and well and spoken of only in whispers, if at all. Other than that, have a good time.

 

Messina - a visit to Taormina and the Greek Theater is worthwhile. The town is modern, medieval and ancient. It has the theater from when it was a Greek outpost, a 12th Century church and some relatively modern buildings among other structures. If you have time, sit and enjoy an espresso and cornetto and watch the people go by. On the other hand Messina itself is more modern with some sights to see, but not as much history.

 

Rome - what more can I tell you? We spent six days there and will be going back because we did not see all that we wanted to see. If you can, visit the Villa Borghese museum. We spent an afternoon at the Vatican with an art history guide and just touched on some of the major paintings, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. We could probably spend a week just touring the Vatican museums and we aren't the type to memorize every fact tag. [explore the website http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm before you go].

 

I think that just about covers the ports that we can provide information about. Hope it helps. Have a great cruise. It sounds terrific.

 

[Host Walt]

WOW that was a great review thanks so much. Pretty much La Ramblas and La Familia Sagrada are the two big ones for Barcelona. I think these we will do on our own, and not book ships tours...

 

A good way to see and enjoy Barcelona on your own is to do a Gaudi walk where you stroll La Ramblas over to Familia Sagrada and look for Gaudi architecture. In the process you will get a flavour of how interesting Barcelona's central area is.

 

Here are some photos of Gaudi architecture: Antoni Gaudi Photo Tour

[chloes nana]

 

Here are some photos of Gaudi architecture: Antoni Gaudi Photo Tour

THANKS! the pics are wonderful. Guess I am glad I still have 8 months.... so much research to make sure we see everything we want to try and see. I am sure we will have to repeat this adventure with a more northern aspect later on to catch some of what we might miss. Thanks again to everyone! keep the suggestions coming! How about cabins? we have a VF guarantee at this point, heard about the upgrade fairy but will be very happy with a VF, I am sure., not much time is spent in the cabin on this cruise I would think. Do first time ever cruisers get upgrades very often?? we have been booked since October 08 for this cruise in August 09 if that makes a difference.:confused:

[azrose]

On our Med cruise, we did not even care what the cabin was---we were hardly there!! It is a very "port intensive" cruise. We even missed our "sit down" dinners since we were out and about until the last minute and then too tired to worry about getting dressed up.....just a thought to save $$ for your excursions!! But, that is me.....

 

I did all ship excursions for the Med cruise. But, I was travelling with and responsible for my 16 year old son and wanted the "safety net" of the ship's excursions. We mixed it up. Naples we went to Pompeii, Sorrento and Capri excursion; Messina, the tour to Taromino; Livorno the tour to Florence (tried to go to Lucca and tour was cancelled). Other ports, Dubrovnik, Venice, Barcelone we did on our own.....

[fun_seeker]

 

Rome - what more can I tell you? We spent six days there and will be going back because we did not see all that we wanted to see. If you can, visit the Villa Borghese museum. We spent an afternoon at the Vatican with an art history guide and just touched on some of the major paintings, the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter's Basilica. We could probably spend a week just touring the Vatican museums and we aren't the type to memorize every fact tag. [explore the website http://www.vatican.va/phome_en.htm before you go].

 

I realized what else I can tell you.

 

By the way the museum in the Villa Borghese is the Galleria Borghese. If you have the time, the Etruscan museum, the Villa Giulia is not too far away. I should warn you that we are walkers and found the walk from the Vatican to Piazza del Popolo to be a pleasant walk made in about a couple of hours because we got lost getting there (I forgot the map :(, but we found some interesting places along the way). You can look the distance up on a map to gauge our idea of distances against what you are used to.

 

Unless you are very big eaters, the phrase to remember in Italy is uno per due [pronounced oo-no pear dew-way]. It means one dish for two people. It enabled us to enjoy appetizer, pasta and entree without feeling like we were overstuffed.

 

Food prices in Rome are very high in the "Best of ..." restaurants. Think 150Euro for dinner. We learned about some restaurants from people we met in Rome and found these restaurants to be enjoyable and at more moderate prices:

 

Ara Pacis "La Capricciosa"

Largo dei Lombardi 8

Excellent food, very good service

We ate there before we learned uno per due and it cost 70Euro + tip. You can eat here for less with "uno per due."

 

La Pace (near piazza Navona)

via del Teatro Pace 42a

Better for lunch, but good anytime

http://www.lapacedelpalato.com/EN/Home_en.html

 

Hosteria de Cesare (meat & fish)

via crescenzio 13

near Piazza Cavour

http://www.ristorantecesare.com/homeeng.php

 

Il Miraggio

Vicolo Sciarra 59

very good Sardinian food, entrees 8-18Euro

 

Hostaria Antica Roma

via Appia Antica, 87

Excellent food, not in Rome, but on Appian Way

http://www.anticaroma.it/en/index2.html

 

Myosotis

Vicolo della Vaccarella 3-5

good food, good service, entrees 8-21Euro

 

[fun_seeker]

A good way to see and enjoy Barcelona on your own is to do a Gaudi walk where you stroll La Ramblas over to Familia Sagrada and look for Gaudi architecture. In the process you will get a flavour of how interesting Barcelona's central area is.

 

Here are some photos of Gaudi architecture: Antoni Gaudi Photo Tour

 

Thanks for the pictures of the Gaudi architecture. They brought back pleasant memories of Barcelona. Next time I have to get pictures of some of the street performers.

 

[BigBearLady]

We're doing this same cruise in May 2009. I have found tons of great information on the ports board, look under Europe, then choose Mediterranean. There is a woman who lives in Dubrovnik who posts regularly with tons of information. There is lots of info about transportation, hotels, tours and tour guides, doing it yourself. I know it's a little overwhelming trying to plan for everything especially on your first cruise, but almost all the information you could possibly need is on these boards somewhere, and if it's not here already there's usually someone who knows the answer.

 

Have a great time!

Hello "Fun". I think I will be on one portion of this cruise at the same time. I'll depart from Rome on the Noordam on May 19 and again on May 29 for a total of 20 days.

[chloes nana]

I realized what else I can tell you.

 

 

that one I cut and pasted into an email to myself and will print out for my notebook! thanks again

[Feresa]

I third the suggestion to visit the Borghese in Rome. Gorgeous, and I think it's the only museum I've been where the building was made for the art and the art for the building. But I'm kind of a Bernini junkie anyway.

 

Rome, as has been mentioned, will be HOT. What I haven't seen mentioned is that this is the perfect excuse to eat lots of GELATO! YUMMY!

[fun_seeker]

that one I cut and pasted into an email to myself and will print out for my notebook! thanks again

 

By the way my BW pointed out to me that the guide who provided us with such a wonderful tour of Rome was Marco, not Mario. Now you know I am in my dotage. :o

 

[chloes nana]

By the way my BW pointed out to me that the guide who provided us with such a wonderful tour of Rome was Marco, not Mario. Now you know I am in my dotage. :o

 

Mario, Marco... oh well all the better I have the right name now but you are not the only one in your dotage!:rolleyes: