"Florence on Your Own" Excursion Times

We visit Florence (8 am to 8 pm June 1 on Insignia) and want to do the "Florence on Your Own" excursion to visit museums. Has anyone taken the transfer bus recently who can tell us when it actually arrives in Florence and when you have to be on the bus to return to the ship?

Zorimar-

They gather the "group" in the Insignia lounge at 8:30 AM, and try to be on the busses for 9AM. This gets you into Florence for 10:30 (If everything has gone to plan)

You'll be given a meeting spot (for us it outside the Uffizi) and a time (probably 4:30 PM) for the return trip. This gets you back to the ship by 6pm which gives Oceania a nice cushion for the 8PM sailing (all aboard will be at 7:30, anyway).

Hope this helped, have a wonderful trip!

We had planned to take the bus to Florence but we thought it was quite pricey and decided that if we missed the ship we only had to get to Rome the next day. We met up with another couple and when we got a taxi to the station he offered to take us wherever we wanted for the whole day for 160E. So we did that and had a marvellous day. He took us up to Piazzale Michelango to enjoy the view, then dropped us off and we spent several hours seeing Florence. On the way back to the ship we went to Pisa. A wonderful day for less than the cost of the bus.

The following day we did take an Oceania excursion to Rome because if we had missed the ship it would have been two days before we could catch up to them in Ancona. Plus, our friends had already missed the ship in Barcelona, travelling overnight to rejoin the ship in Marseille, so they were not anxious to repeat the experience!

Mo

Why pay $109 each for a 72 mile each way bus trip.

Just go to the railway station and get tickets to Florence (Firenze) there, for a fraction of the price.

Trains leave every day for Firenze every hour at 11 mins past, taking 1hr 22 mins. You can even combine this with a visit to Pisa if you do your homework.

Italian Railways website: http://orario.trenitalia.com/b2c/TimeTable