Traveling on a cruise next month to Italy and Greece. Saw Ocean Wave tours with Dimitri on Rick Steve's show and got a price for private bus tour and boat ride. The website is very primitive and wanted me to pay $200 deposit through Paypal but through Friends and family so no guarantee. Made me wonder if this was legit business or not. Anyone use their services recently? www.oceanwavetours.com.
Posted by
martinez, ca, usa
2404 posts
hey hey claman5
i would explore other tours. don't care for paypal at all, had few issues with them and found something else. is that deposit refundable if cancelled?
we did a greek isle tour out of venice few years ago which we really liked. we are also registered on cruisecritic.com and shared cost of private tours with other cruisers with their input, 4 to 6 passengers. i did research for town/village tours, emailed and had very good communication with themdriver/guide meet us out of ship platform and off we went. told him kinda what we wanted and he took the lead
your time here is much longer than ours was, we took cable car up (it was so crowded everywhere, pushing around, all in a hurry). we walked on our own along alley ways in small neighborhoods while others zigged we zagged, then down to some of the shops that were packed again, my crazy friend bought a large gorgeous pottery, took 3 months of shipping to get here LOL
we then went to a small mom & pop's restaurant (?) overlooking caldera with gorgeous sunset, delicious fresh food. there are so many small/big, budget/fancy places to eat. we wanted something simple with a shared bottle of greek wine
here is a couple tour companies you can check out:
getyourguide.com
santorini, see what they have and what interests you
withlocals.com
santorini, check what's available
santorinidave.com
look at what kind of tours they have
toursbylocals.com
santorini
greektravel.com
santorini food tour, read what is included.
there are other tours if you were going to other islands or cities on different websites i had bookmarked. be careful when getting back onto ship because of crowds waiting for cable car and some riding donkeys or walking and hopping to miss the poo and slipperyness, then tender to ship. we had a rough one with the winds, never can tell. if there are 4 ships in, that's over 11,000 people. so many traveling nowdays and it's so crowded at all popular places with social media/instagram/tiktok.
friends just got back from mediterranean cruise (RT barcelona, all stops/ports were CRAZY especially rome, naples & florence.
pack your patience. enjoy and have fun
aloha