My husband and I have been through CRAZY stress the last 6 months and we always said "when this is all over we are disappearing for over 2 weeks". So things will be wrapping up next week (hopefully) so we are taking off. I have never been to the Med only the "northern" (England, Belgium, Amsterdam) part of Europe. My husband has been but in the 80s. This is sort of "getting away from it all" type of trip.
So from what I am hearing is Plan to fly out Monday the 24th, then get used to the time change. (If we leave the 24th that gets us in the 25th). We are flying from Green Bay, WI. As for excursions I think we will just wait until we are on board and figure it out. (it's that type of trip).
So if any of you have any learning's of doing a trip last minute like this (good or bad) please let me know, it would be appreciated. (we SERIOUSLY don't need any additional stress right now).
I knew to turn to Disboards for some direction and support cause you guys ROCK
n8tivecaligirl, you are in the right place! What a great way to "get away from it all" and cruising can be seriously stress free - and I think coming in so you arrive on the 25th is a great plan because you'll have the day to start relaxing and then a day to see Barcelona. Our mistake in 2007 was arriving just the day before and we didn't have time to hardly see anything plus we were so exhausted - and we left the same day the cruise got back, so I felt like we cheated ourselves out of seeing Barcelona. We are using the hop-on-hop-off Bus Turistic for our sight-seeing in Barcelona. There's a link in the first post if you're interested in seeing a bit more about it - we used them in 2007 for our few hours we were there which is why we are using them again.
DCL's website is pretty user-friendly for seeing what excursions they offer if you are inclined to use ship tours. For this cruise, I would think if you plan to go into Rome or Florence, you might want to consider one (especially since you want it to be stress free) - these two cities are relatively far from port so part of the day will be eaten up with transportation. You could also check with companies that do driver / guide tours - we are using Rome in Limo for a day in Rome and I saw they also do Florence and other areas as well -
www.romeinlimo.com is their website if you wanted to take a look.
I would say that Villefranche you can do yourself with public transportation into Nice or over to Monaco or just stay in the Villefranche vicinity and relax for the day - it's a quaint little place and one of the most beautiful port areas, IMHO.
If you don't want to go into Florence or Pisa, from La Spezia you might consider going up to Cinque Terre - it's close and supposed to be easy to do by the local train or ferry - we are going to do it on the June 15th trip - our first big "do it yourself" excursion!
For Civitavecchia, we'll be there on a Sunday so Rome will be crowded as it is the last Sunday of the month so there is free admission to several sites. DH and I are actually doing a DCL to Bracciano Lake for the morning and then going to poke around Civitavecchia for the afternoon (and probably do some laundry). (We'll have been to Rome on the previous sailing.)
For Naples, I think someone was looking for a couple to join in on a private excursion they have booked - maybe they'll chime in - they had room for a couple more people, and I think it was going up the Amalfi Coast (anyone?) which would be a beautiful day. We are going to Pompeii as my teenagers wanted to see it (again) since studying it in their high school Latin class this year.
Venice I think you can "do yourself." The number one thing on nearly every "what to do in Venice" list I've seen is "get lost in Venice" - and with an overnight stop, it's perfect for DIY.
Dubrovnik is also a good port to do yourself. We actually have a local tour guide meeting us for the day, but if we hadn't arranged that, we were going to just enjoy the town on our own.
Valletta, Malta, is also a good area to do yourself or to do with DCL. We actually are doing a car hire for this port on the June 15th so we can go out further into the area and see the highlights so that when we are back on this cruise, we'll do it ourselves.
Hope this helps get some ideas - you definitely have some time.
AHHH! I don't know what we are thinking with only 3 weeks to "get our act together" but it's what we could do. So with no time to plan, please let me know basic info such as Do we fly in the day before or day of? Where do we stay if we fly in the day before? We are just gonna "fly by the seat of our pants" on shore excursions cause with work and stuff coming up I have no time to research. So any advice would be awesome.
