6/27 Med Cruise-private tour in Florence

[AnnaS]

There was another thread started by someone on all private tours.

I had written these down from there (and other places).

florencetour.com
prestigerent.com
tuscanybytaxi.it
tuscanymypocket.com

 

[scrapycruiser]

You might check with Papilliontours.com. We cancelled our tour with her ( Lina ) and decided to save money by doing the DCL Florence on Your Own. She was very nice to work with and was willing to come to La Spezia ( for a price ).

 

[Maddie's Nana]

removed - sorry - wrong link

 

[Sassycop]

We are considering a private tour in Florence. Can anyone recommend a good company? Also looking to possibly share the tour with another family-our family of four, DDs 8 and 13.

Did you ever find another family to go in on this excursion with you? If not, my husband and I, along with our 9 year old daughter would be interested.

 

[Andrew DEREK UK]

This is agreat thread

http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1184080

if on the July 28th cruise this is a great thread

http://disboards.com/showthread.php?t=1064311&page=588

 

[arbitrage]

Did you ever find another family to go in on this excursion with you? If not, my husband and I, along with our 9 year old daughter would be interested.

Are you on the 27th cruise?? My wife, and dd 8 and ds 12 are still interested in a private tour in florence/pisa

 

[Sassycop]

Arbitrage- PM me and we can discuss a possible tour together

 

[sharolyn]

Well, we just got off the june 6th sailing and did a private tour including both florence and pisa. We had academy tickets for 12:45 and tower of pisa tickets for 4ish. We had a group of 35 - my original group of 23 and then 3 families of 4 from this board!!! Anyway...i think the tour company we used was wonderful and would highly recomend them - we booked la spezia, rome and naples through travels with friends dot com.

In talking with a number of people onboard, we were able to see a lot more then most - granted we asked to do more. Most of the tours, including disney, did not include a tower climb or actually going into the academy to see david. I would not buy tickets for the uffizi on this visit, there is just not enough time!!! When you go to florence, the busses have to drop you off at one point in town, and then they can only pick you up at a point that is completely on the opposite part of town!!! This made it a bit challenging to leave florence quickly enough to get to Pisa in time to make our first groups time for the climb. The pisa folks worked with us as best as they could, but we did end up losing three climbing times!! If you are going to climb the tower, you HAVE to buy these tickets in advance online!!! They sell out and since you will be there for a brief, specific time slot, you have to have the reservations to climb! The cost for the climb is 15 euros. You can book online at boxoffice dot opapisa dot it/Torre/index dot jsp

I would highly recomend climbing the tower, it is very interesting and beautiful on top!!! I would not recomend getting academy tickets - there is a window that you can see in and view the statue of david. with doing both florence and pisa in one day, you really do not have time to go through the whole museum. We did go into the dome and the ceiling is something you will not want to miss in florence. Also, walking through the city to get to the bus was wonderul, lots of statues and beautiful buildings. We also saw the river and the incredible bridges!! Florence is just an amazing city, but no matter how you do it, your time there is very limited if you plan on doing pisa!!! Having a tour guide walk you through the city and point out what you are running by, seriously, at least makes the trip worthwhile!!

If you can get enough people do agree to do the tours together, it is cheaper and more flexible than disney for sure!!! For example, in Naples we went to Pompeii and had our own tour guide for about 2 hours, we then headed over to Mt. Vestivius for a climb up to the volcano - incredible I must say, even though the hike up there is a bit trying - we then went to this wonderful resturant on our way to the Amalfi coast. We drove up the coastline to Positono. What an amazing coastline!!! The whole day was unbelievable!!

In Rome, we went to the colesium - after buying our tickets at Palatine Hill so we would not have to wait in any 2 hour line. We walked around the collesium before heading back over to the forum - which we explored for about 30 minutes. We then grabbed some great italian sandwiches outside of the collesium from the street vendors and then headed over to the vatican. I had made reservations through the bishop's office for United states visitors to the vatican - www dot pnac dot org YOu can arrange for either individual or group tours of the vatican. we did the sistine chapel and st. peters with them and it was amazing!!! The tour guide we had was so knowledgeable and incredible! She took us under st peters to view the previous pope's burial site and where they say st. peter is buried - a highlight for many in our group. Anyway, it was a wonderful visit to the vatican! We then went to the parthenon and over to trevi fountain. I know in talking with a number of people who did the disney tour that they did not get to see half as much and the only benefit was seeing the sistine chapel with no one else in there. Trust me when i say, you can see just as much of the sistine chapel with the place full as not...and for the price, it is just as amazing with a room full of people. Just my thoughts on that...

After doing a lot of research and thinking that I could do all the shore excursions on our own, i found that the train schedule in florence was not going to work, so I contacted this company to get a quote on just florence/pisa. when it came back so reasonable, i then asked them to put together a quote for the other two major ports and we ended up going with this company rather than on our own. the cost difference was overall $100 more per person than what i had figured for us doing it on our own, and I must say, worth it. There is NO way we could have seen all that we did on our own, NO WAY!!! Having the bus there to pick us up and drop us off helped!! Also, not having me running around trying to figure out where taxi's, bus stops or train stations were was worth the extra 100!! There are just so many people jammed into these places that trying to even walk across the street in any of these cities is a challenge, much less trying to get from point a to point b. I can not even imagine how long it would have taken us to get from the colesium to the vatican if we had tried to do this on our own. I guess taking a taxi is an option, but the streets are just packed!!!

Oh yeah, and as for our florence/pisa visit - in trying to do so much with so many, we did cut it VERY close to getting back to port!!! This is a tendering port, and the last tender was at 7:30. We made it back to the dock at 7:29!!! The traffic in LaSpezia was HORRIBLE....we ended up not even taking the bus back to the dock, but were let off about a block from the tendering spot, we then ran to catch the boat!!! All 35 of us running, it is funny now thinking back, but a bit scary then!! And this was knowing that our guide knew the tender company owner and was in contact with him our whole way back to the port...anyway, having a guide with us that knew where to go was a huge blessing, we would have missed the boat I am sure. Well, actually, there was still two groups of Disney excursions in Pisa when we left! So I knew we were safe, but still, until you are on that boat your heart is fluttering for sure!!! Again, if I was to do this over, I would NOT buy tickets for the academy, I would walk through the town with a tourguide pointing out the hightlights and for sure climbing the tower of pisa. Anyway, hope this info helps...

 

[Sassycop]

Artbitrage- PM not working, email at WLHein at gmail.com