Favorite excursions from the Med? Hard to say! I can tell you what we did, though, and what we liked about each one. We did all of our excursions through DCL and most of them with the "For Families" tag at the end since we had the boys with us who were 9 and 11.
Naples: We did Isle of Capri / Sorrento / Pompeii. Fabulous. It was our second port day. We took a hydrofoil to Capri but didn't have a whole lot of time -the one we did was for families and took us on a boat ride around the island which was fun and interesting, but when we got our free time on Capri, we didn't have time to take the funicular up to the proper town. So we just stayed in the harbor, did some souvenir shopping, and found a restroom
Then back on the hydrofoil over to Sorrento which I loved that town. We did the same souvenir stop with the inlaid wood which was interesting and just a part of what we had to do. Then a delicious lunch at a nearby restaurant and a little bit of free time - then off to Pompeii which was the highlight of that day. However, our time in Pompeii was in the afternoon and if I had to do it again, i would want to start there, especially with children as they were getting tired at that point.
Rome: We did an all day that took us inside the Colosseum and to the Vatican and to the Trevi Fountain. We wanted to see each of them, we wanted to be sure our excursion took us inside the Colosseum and not just outside, and we didn't want to spent half a day at the Vatican - so we looked at each possible excursion to find one that fit us the best. It was an early morning train - about 1+ hours so there was time for children to doze off. We loved our tour guide who we thought was the best of all of our excursions. Her English was excellent, she was quick, and she made sure no one dawdled and delayed us. The only thing we didn't like about this excursion is that there was an extra CM who joined us and put us one over the number of people who should be on the excursion - which meant the train ride had us not able to sit together and at the lunch, they were short by a person and space and our family ended up having to sit on the side and barely got served. I was aggravated about that and the fact that many of the others on our excursion paid no attention to arranging themselves so that they could sit together and still allow others to sit together. We would have had to sit two, one, and one - and with the boys still as young as they were, we weren't going to split up like that - if one person had gotten up from a table that had one of the one's and gone to the other table, then we could've split up two and two, but no one would... it was because we had the odd person ... But we learned a lot from that experience about jockeying for position within an excursion group
don't be first on the bus or you'll be last off unless you take up the front seats - but those aren't the best seats. Better in the middle
We were always trying to be courteous and load the back first but apparently that's not strategic. Oh well. Live and learn - and we did! Chalked it up to experience - and that certainly didn't ruin our enjoyment of our day in Rome.
Pisa - we opted for Pisa over Florence because the boys wanted to climb the Leaning Tower. However, it was only offered in the morning so we were not able to book it because it was sold out - but we kept watching online and they eventually added an afternoon excursion so we booked that one - and it was our favorite day - for one thing, it was the day after Rome and we were exhausted so it was nice to not have an early excursion the next day. The rest did us good - we had taken the 10-night rather than the 11-night - the 11-night had a sea day between Rome and Florence/Pisa. It was a nice relaxing day and the bus ride to Pisa was interesting. We had tickets that let us go up the tower - it was amazing - and the kids loved it.
Villefranche - while the excursion wasn't my favorite, this port was my favorite! We did a bus ride over to Nice and the little toursit train took us around and we walked through the old city and market. Our tour guide was the worst of all we had this trip --- you could tell she wasn't overly experienced, but we liked Nice enough. This port was nearing the end so we were pretty much excursioned out by this point which we knew we'd be so we did just a morning excursion. Back on board for lunch and then DH and I spent some time in the little town there on our own for the afternoon. The ship stayed late so they could take guests into Monte Carlo for the evening, but we didn't go.
We had her go ahead and add it since we had worked out how it needed to happen with our B2B and one being a DVC reservation, but we will pretty surely drop it once we're able to book air on our own. At least we have a "top" price now for budgeting purposes. She said hotels were not yet available.
I love my DMiL, but things go much smoother when she is not privy to all the details of our life. Kind of sad that she is the one family member that would cruise with us except that we found that our ideas regarding cruising were too different to mesh. The whole "everybody do their own thing" just wasn't gonna work with her
The inlaid wood shop in Sorrento will ship your purchase home for you and we took advantage of this feature (alot). The only thing you should be aware is that you do pay import fees on said item which was $20.00 or so. On our 2009 Royal Carribean trip we went to Capri and it was beautiful to see BUT the trip to the farm for lunch with Sorrento and Pompeii is still the best and we are leaning to re-book this excursion next time.
