Shuttle Buses

[bigilla]

Hi.. We are a family who will be sailing the Mediterranean on the Norwegian Spirit next Summer. We will be visiting Messina, Naples, Civitavecchia, Livorno, Palma de Mallorca, Cagliari, Barcelona, Cannes & Marseille.

 

Can you please tell us whether this cruiseliner has shuttle buses at the ports?

 

Are they FREE or is there a charge?

 

And are the shuttles frequent?

 

Thanks in advance. :o

[hawkeyetlse]

In Messina, Naples, and Cagliari, you dock right in town, so they don't offer any shuttles. Depending what you want to do, just walk into town or arrange your own transport.

 

In Palma and Marseille, there are NCL shuttles that take you downtown. Not free. You can also take city buses (cheaper).

 

In Livorno, there are shuttles that go either downtown (run by the city, about 5 euros round trip) or to the train station (run by NCL, 15 euros round trip).

 

In Civitavecchia there is a free port shuttle, but it only takes you to the port entrance. From there you can walk into town or arrange further transport.

 

Cannes is a tender port. (The tenders are free.)

 

In Barcelona there is a city bus that takes you outside the port, where you have bus/metro connections. It is not free.

 

You may have noticed one rule of thumb here: Free shuttles are very rare, very few ports offer them. And anything operated by NCL is almost never, ever free.

 

As for frequency, be prepared to wait 10-15-20 minutes for the next shuttle. If there are lots of people in front of you, you may not get on the next shuttle, so be prepared to wait again. This is the worst case scenario, I'm only mentioning it so you know that you should not rely on the shuttle service if you have a tight schedule and you need to get somewhere ASAP.

Edited September 20, 2016 by hawkeyetlse

[bigilla]

Thanks a lot.. We will try to organise our own journeys. We do not wish to pay for the ship s excursions. And since we have a daughter coming with us, we dont wish to visit cultural sites.

 

In Naples we would like to visit Capri / Anacapri.

In Civitavecchia we just need to get to the train station and from there we will catch the shuttles that take us to the park we want to visit .

In Livorno we are thinking of catching a taxi from the port & back.

In Marseille & Palma we need a taxi from the port too.

 

thanks again for the useful information you provided :D

[hawkeyetlse]

Taxis should be available at all ports, but if you have concerns about your specific plans you can also ask for up to date information in the France, Spain, and Italy ports forums. Livorno in particular is a port where people seem to have difficulties (but nothing that a pocketful of euros can't solve :p)

 

In Naples, the ship docks right next to the pier for ferries to Capri. Again you can ask on the Italy board for current info about schedules etc.

 

For Civitavecchia, check and see if the shuttle you want to catch makes any other stops in town. You might be able to avoid going all the way to the train station and hop on somewhere nearer the place where the port shuttle drops you off.