What to do now?

[zitsky]

So I'm waiting for excursions to be published in 2 months.  Air is booked, I have a spreadsheet with all the excursions I want.  Now I just sit for 2 months.  The suspense is killing me.  

[Heidi13]

We can't book our ship's tours until October, so I am spending the time researching and booking private tours in the many ports where the risks are reasonable. 

[zitsky]

There is one port where I'm thinking to do a private tour.  (Rome)

[Heidi13]

46 minutes ago, zitsky said:

There is one port where I'm thinking to do a private tour.  (Rome)

Last time in Rome we used a ship's tour, which was definitely average. Would definitely consider a private tour in future visits.

[JenRonn1104]

1 hour ago, zitsky said:

There is one port where I'm thinking to do a private tour.  (Rome)

 

We did a private tour with 3 other couples when we were in Rome in 2016.  It was a great tour.  We used Drive in Rome and did the 9 hour tour including 2 hours Vatican Tour Guide and Fast Track Vatican and Colosseum tickets.  We really saw a lot.  I think it was around 140 euro per person for 8 people.  I would highly recommend it.

[zitsky]

Thanks for that suggestion!  I will check it out.

[Peregrina651]

You could start bingeing on books and movies set in the  locales you will be visiting:

 

Three Coins in the Fountain

To Catch a Thief

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

10 of the best films set in Barcelona

Bonjour Tristesse

Mr. Bean's Holiday

Jean de Florette

------------------------------------

The Shadow of the Wind series

The City of Falling Angels (John Berendt of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil fame)

Donna Leon's Commissario Brunetti mystery series

Death in Venice

 

 

[ropomo]

And don't forget YouTube, you could occupy the entire time until your cruise just watching peoples videos (a lot are actually quite good for getting a feel for the town/city you are visiting).  Rick Steves along with many other professionally produced videos are also available on YouTube 

[zitsky]

Interesting.  Thank you.

[ropomo]

One other YouTube note, there are quite a few very good video tours of Viking ships if you want to get a better perspective of the ships and orientation.

[lackcreativity]

For any location where I think we may eat lunch in port, I research restaurants with tripadvisor or yelp and then mark them with a star on my google maps. I download the maps before we leave onto my tablet, and then can use them offline while in port. 

 

I also browse Pinterest just to see some photos of locations.

[Dauntless]

10 hours ago, zitsky said:

There is one port where I'm thinking to do a private tour.  (Rome)

 

We used Italytours.eu which someone else had started and we found out about it on the roll call(also used them in Monaco, Livorno and Naples for various reasons)  The Viking tours did not cover Colosseum and Vatican in one excursion that I remember but it might have but felt the price was too high.  Anyway, there were 12 of us, divided in 2 groups at the beginning of the day and we all meet after lunch for the guided tour of the Vatican.  Split into 2 groups again for the ride back to the ship.