Mediterranean Cruise Excursions - any advice?

travellerboy

My wife and I have booked a Med Cruise for early summer next year and need advice on Tours.
We tend to avoid the cruise-line tours as they are too crowded and overly expensive. Looking for tours at the following ports - Villefranche, Livorno, Civitavecchia and Naples.
I am considering booking with Cruising Excursions.com - Has anyone been on their tours, your comment would be appreciated - Thanks.

loobs40

Have a look at the Roll Call thread for that sailing on the Cruise Critic forums. There will be recommendations on there and more than likely people on that thread will organize excursions.

Having done that itinerary, if your looking for moneysaving ideas I would say that you could do Livorno on your own, by getting the train to Pisa or Florence. In Naples just get the frequent train to Sorrento for Pompei and Herculanneum. In Civitavecchia, you can get the train to Rome (one hour each way). At VilleFranche we took the local buses to the sights.

Alternatively check out the trip adviser forums or Google for companies advertising excursions from those places.

lazer

travellerboy wrote: »

My wife and I have booked a Med Cruise for early summer next year and need advice on Tours.
We tend to avoid the cruise-line tours as they are too crowded and overly expensive. Looking for tours at the following ports - Villefranche, Livorno, Civitavecchia and Naples.
I am considering booking with Cruising Excursions.com - Has anyone been on their tours, your comment would be appreciated - Thanks.

I was recently on a cruise which docked in Naples.

It takes about 15 mintues or less to walk to the train station from the port (and plently of taxis are available).
There are also tourist buses depart from the dock to Pompei, Sorrento etc - so if doind it on your own is not your thing, these are available and do not need prebooked.

There are regular trains to Pompei, and you can then travel onwards to Sorrento and return to Naples.

This what we done - it worked out very reasonable and you were not being hounded by tour guides and had time to look at the things that really interested you!

We docked in Civitaveccha, so did not do any tours from there, we just got a Transfer to Rome.

joebob

From villefranche get the bus to monte carlo about 30 mins, then you can get the little tourist train about 45 min ride. 8 euro each, or if your fit walk around yourself, changing of the guard at 12.00 everyday,look round the harbour see the casino, not much else there really.

travellerboy

Thank you all for your comments, I will take your advice and take the public transport, just need to be careful to return to the ship on-time.