Italian excursions... Worth it? 12/07/2015 explorer

[Mac303]

Another vote for Romeinlimo, outstanding service, there was four in our party, we used them in three of our ports, and will use them again without hesitation.

Edited June 19, 2015 by Mac303

[moshek]

Interesting! So RCI has a private train? How much did it cost, do you remember?

 

Sorry I can't remember as it was 2 years ago, it was bookable as an excursion through the cruise planner as "Rome on your own" or something similar. There was a tour guide on each carriage who gave you general advice about Rome and a guide map, and of course tried to sell you tickets to queue jump at the Vatican!

[tidygirl]

We just did the Med.in Sept. I have a review of "Our families viewpoint of our Med cruise" I did in Oct. Most every day we did on our own. Rome was a little more challenging but as our family was happy to quickly see the highlights and to not linger we saw what we wanted to see. Many people on here and also private tour guides said we would never see it all, but we did!

Pisa was easy also (not sure if I put the directions on my review how to find the tower, but I do have that) We did climb it which my young adult kids said we HAD to do if we were going there! We tried to squeeze in Florence too, but we shouldn't have as we hardly had any time off the train before catching our return. So I definitely wouldn't recommend trying to do both!

In Laspenzia we used CBMT (can't be missed tours) did the Amalfi coast, Sorrento and Pompeii. I think they may do tours in Rome? The price was much more reasonable than any I had found beforehand. We were happy with them!

[csutton2]

Thanks for all the replies guys!!

I think we have decided on doing Rome on our own, but with the shuttle bus provided by the royal Caribbean excursion, mainly due to the risk of missing the boat if done privately & it's our first time in Rome, so it's playing it safe. Everywhere else we are doing solo! Just can't run the risk of getting stuck in traffic or breaking down so far away from port :(

 

Thanks again all!!!

Chris.

[jamesr3939]

I am not a fan of ship excursions and have mostly done our own thing over the years. However, Rome I would highly recommend doing the ship excursions. It's a long day and there is a lot to see. We booked the smaller "VIP" excursion and it was well worth it. There was only about 14 -15 of us on the van. I know we got into some places ahead of the normal crowd.

 

At the Vatican we had somebody get lost (me) and were late making it back to the van. They waited for "that guy" and when we got back to the ship it was on single lines with a crew gangway down. I hate to think if we had been on our own.

 

BTW: there was another van later than us by about ten minutes.

[beatthesock]

We are looking to share a tour in Rome with share to shore tours details on roll call explorer 9th August