Best resource for Med Cruise?

[Joel0917]

i'm doing 5 day from Barcelona. Looking for excursions and what to do in Barcelona as well as the 3 stops on the cruise.
Is there a book? or quality site on excursions?

 

[jenf22]

We just did a 10-night Med out of Barcelona on NCL. I bought the Rick Steves Mediterranean Cruise Ports book. I enjoyed going through it, but honestly I could have lived without it. I would suggest the Cruise Critic ports forum. There are lots of reviews on the various independent excursions. We also used Share a Shore Excursion for 2 of our excursions (Barcelona and Florence). For these you need to find other people who want to do the excursion with you. So if you're doing DCL (which I assume you are), join the meet-up group for your cruise. If you're doing another line, they also have meet-up groups on Cruise Critic. The independent excursions we did were great and a LOT cheaper than the excursions through the cruise line. Best of luck!

 

[kiford]

Rick Steves does a good job in all of his books giving you ideas that you can then do more investigation on independently. But we booked some tours through Viator. Did a food and wine tour (7 people plus driver) of Barcelona and area. I want to go back just to do that one all over again.

 

[tink1970]

I use cruise critic as a reference as well as reading the trip reports here on the boards. So many people share their experiences -I find it very helpful.

 

[aggiedog]

Cruise Critic or TripAdvisor. CC is very DIY oriented. You can also look at what DCL offers as an idea of what's available in each port, then look on TA to arrange it for usually a better price with more flexibility.

 

[bibbidibobbidibecky]

I always look at Disney's port excursions to get an idea of what to do along with Tripadvisor and reading other people's trip reports. I find between these three resources, I always find something great to do!

 

[jrabbit]

when in Europe - I use Rick Steves as my reference (City and Country guidebooks). I Read about the country / city and decide what I want to see.

THEN I will see if I can do it on my own (Rick Steves Cruise Book, public transportation maps online, independent tours, etc), or if there's a ship tour that meets my needs.

But start by researching your ports and surrounding areas to determine what YOU want to do. And then work from there. And also take into consideration the "experts" advice. ie: Pisa for the Leaning Tower Of ... I've heard about it my entire life, "Had" to see it. Ignored the experts and went to Pisa (the Field of Miracles is pretty awesome) instead of going to Cinque Terre and boy howdy, do I wish we visited Cinque Terre or Siena instead.

 

[aggiedog]

I just got back from a land trip to Tuscany. I'll second skipping Pisa. Sienna or San Gimigniano were my favorites. We did Pisa, but had the luxury of 6 days there. IMHO, even Lucca was nicer than Pisa. It has this great, very wide wall around the old city that you can rent bikes and ride around the top of it.

 

[cruiser21]

Are you going with kids? My kids favorite thing was seeing the leaning tower of "pizza". I wouldn't skip Pisa.

 

[3Down1Up]

Agreed that Rick Steves is great for researching a port you want to do on your own - we did Rome on our own and followed his very detailed instructions getting from ship to train station at the port and getting around Rome. For a private tour, we used this site and others and went off of recommendations. I think the Med ports are great for doing non-DCL excursions because the times in ports are so long - not as much pressure to be back on board at an early time.

 

[GPaLarry]

We did the Med. cruise in Sept. of last year, first leg of a B2B with Trans. Before we went, I bought two Rick Steves books on Med. cruise ports and map of Italy. I agree with JRabbit that Pisa must be an acquired taste...bit of a drive, long walk and too many venders to make it worth getting the obligatory photo pushing back on the tower. Wish we had spent more time in Florence. Because of rough water we could not dock in Monte Carlo, so docked at Marseilles the next day instead. Somehow, in a matter of a minutes, DCL came up with "at sea" activities for the unexpected current day, got approval to dock in Marseilles, arranged at least a dozen shore excursions there and let everybody on the ship know about all of the above within maybe three hours. A ship's officer told me later that they have contingency plans for almost everything...how true. We went to our Steves books to see which excursions might work for us in this new port. Bingo, we found Avignon, went there and a winery later and loved every minute, in spite of the rain early on. Some of the ports on this cruise are not very tourist friendly dockside...more for freight/cargo ships. Do your research on all these ports and attractions. The port days are very long (if you want them to be) and wear you out...but you'll love every minute.

 

[jrabbit]

Med Cruise Summary for August: Hot, Humid, Loooong Exhausting Days, and Oh so very much worth it. We spent 3 weeks in Spain, Italy and on the cruise. By the end of the trip we were totally wiped out. But it was a great trip and a good tired!!

 

[m3owbox]

In case you're interested I wrote a trip report on my Med cruise. https://www.disboards.com/threads/first-trip-to-the-med-complete.3550197/