Choosing an excursion for Rome was the most difficult thing for us. We knew it would be a super-long day, and by having the 10-night cruise, we didn't have a sea day between any of the ports. We had some specific things we wanted to see in Rome and some specific things we didn't want to spend the whole day doing, so we used that to pick our excursion.
We wanted our excursion to include the Colosseium, but not just the outside - we wanted to go in. We wanted to see the Trevi Fountain. And we wanted to see the Vatican but not spend the whole day there.
Our excursion started early in the morning on the Roma Express. Peter Pan rode with us. That's one thing I wanted to mention, too --
DCL did a great job of getting their photographers out in the various ports as well as the characters. We had an escort from the Port to the train station in Rome where we met our guide. Our escort also stayed with us for the whole trip, too. Our tour guide in Rome was the best we had - she was fabulous - very knowledgeable, her English was excellent, and while we didn't dilly-dally anywhere, she certainly didn't rush us through. We had lunch at a restaurant with several other excursion groups and we had use of their restroom
From there, we went to the Vatican where it was hot as blazes during our wait to enter. We had the obligatory souvenir store stop for restrooms and shopping before reboarding the bus to return to the Port. We nearly missed the train and would've had to wait thirty minutes if we hadn't all run through the train station. Whew.
The following day was La Spezia. We were exhausted and because we were on the 10-night, we didn't have the sea-day to rest between Rome and La Spezia (Florence/Pisa). We chose an afternoon excursion that took us to Pisa and included the climb to the top of the tower. This was our favorite excursion in terms of fun. I think getting to sleep in that morning was what the boys enjoyed the most. This was a tender-port, so we didn't head over to La Spezia until closer to time to meet our excursion. Again, we had an escort to Pisa (and one other thing - there was usually at least one DCL cast member accompanying the various tour groups on "non-official duty" although some went "officially") and took a bus to Pisa where we boarded a "choo-choo" which is an open-air tram/train that took us to the town.
We got to climb the tower:
and then had some "free time" while waiting on the rest of our group to finish - they only let so many up at a time - and if you don't do an excursion that includes climbing the tower, or if you do it on your own, make sure to find out ahead of time how to get tix because otherwise you won't get to go. We did a little souvenir shopping and got gelato.
Here's my souvenir from Pisa:
We then had a walk through the town and ended up at a restaurant for pastries.
We took the choo-choo back to the bus. On the way back, the DCL guy who was with us noticed that our guide had miscounted and we had left someone behind at the pastry shop. So we waited while our escort went back to get her. The confusion resulted from some non-excursion tourists hopping onto our choo-choo and the escort got discombobulated when counting and having them get off. Anyway, that took about 30- minutes for the guest to be fetched -- she was on the excursion alone but no one knew she was alone so none of the rest of us were looking out for her (you know, like if your mom is in the restroom, you'd say hey, wait a minute, mom isn't here?). Anyway, all was well, but we made it back to get the last tender back to the ship for the night. Whew. Again, that's why we chose DCL excursions.
(more to come)