Travel in late May '27 - Celebrity Ship leaving Barcelona

I would always advocate for arriving early because you never know what might happen along the way. Especially for a ship that will leave without if you're not there. Barcelona is a great city and well worth some extra time. Check out Basilica of the Sagrada Familia and the twisty old town, Picasso museum and/or the food markets.

Nice is a great (French) city with plenty to see and explore on the waterfront, "old Nice" and there is a Matisse Museum hanging right over the ruins of a Roman bath. Antibes is also a great little town if you have time.
Florence is full of many people's "must sees" in italy - statue of David, Uffizi gallery, Duomo etc - but book tickets any must sees ahead of time. Assuming you're coming into Livorno it would be 1.5 hours driving or 2 hours on the train so plan accordingly. Pisa is about an hour by train if you want to do the tower shuffle.
Naples is a dense and chaotic city and well worth exploring. Pompeii is reachable but Herculaneum is closer.

Have a great trip,
=Tod

If you want to arrive a day early, I think that's a great way to decompress, wander around to battle jet lag and give yourself a cushion but it's not much time to see Barcelona. Sagrada familia is the one must see imo but there are a ton of other Gaudi sites worth your time.

Naples - Pompeii makes sense if you haven't seen it. I assume the ship has a popular sponsored daytrip. Otherwise, the archeological museum is pretty amazing and you are right there already. You don't really need this as a tour since it's a cab ride away and there are guides on site at the museum, but you could choose the package tour. Finally, you could just soak up the vibe and do the RS walking tour. I would probably avoid blue grotto/Capri trips.

Not sure where in Sicily you are going but I assume Catania?

Rome is Rome. Do the things. See the stuff.

Florence is a long ways from the water. I hope this is an overnight since you'll be burning a lot of time in transit. Are you into renaissance art and sculpture, cuz this is ground zero. Grab lunch at Mister Pizza and enjoy a million € view.

Are you sailing on the Xcel round trip? Arriving at least one day (and preferably more) before a cruise that starts a considerable distance from your home is just good planning.

Note that Florence is landlocked, and you will dock in La Spezia, a 2 hour train or bus ride away. You will need advance tickets for the major museums such as the Uffizi or Accademia. Pisa is much closer. Or you might opt to visit a few of the Cinque Terre villages, since they would be closest. But be prepared for big crowds.

You will port in Villefranche-sur-Mer, not Nice proper. You can get to Nice easily with a short train ride. Or you might opt to go to Monaco. Or stay in Villefranche and perhaps visit the Villa Ephrussi in Saint -Jean-Cap -Ferrat

I will only echo what others have said, be aware of where the ship docks vs the big name city they advertise it as. Florence and Rome would be the two best examples, you don't dock there, since both are well away from the water, and the cruise ship ports even further.

It can even be rather inconvenient and time consuming to get off the ship, then to someplace to catch public transit, while thousands others are doing the same thing, so have a plan, or as the cruise ship company would recommend, use their excursions.

I looked at the itinerary. It docks at La Spezia at 7a and leaves at 7p. They offer sponsored trips to Florence and other nearby places.

The port to Florence is a good 2 hours not counting traffic on the way back, and there will be traffic on the way back. So they probably budget ≈5.5 hours sitting on a bus; more if they are doing side trips to Pisa. It's a lot. They offer other closer options; le Cinque Terre, the Carrara Marble quarries, Lucca, etc. That said, if you haven't been to Florence before, I might suck it up and do the bus trip.

Hello all!
Hope everyone is having a terrific day

Looking for suggestions into hotels (in Barcelona) taking into account- distance from airport and distance from Ship pier (which will be brand new- Terminal "G" i am told with completion date in early '27.

My plans are to arrive in Barcelona 2 days prior to embarkation to allow a modest time spent exploring the city and it's sites.

Hotel pricing can be expensive (what isn't?) and I am looking to book a mid to upper range $ hotel as long as we are relatively close to embarkation point and points of interest. I have done some google searches for hotels but thought it best to seek advice from those of you who have had more experiences.

thank you in advance for commentary

Eurostars Grand Marina is a Barcelona hotel worth looking at. The subway is about a 20 minute walk away

My family and I stayed in Barcelona 2 nights prior to a cruise in mid-September. We stayed at Hotel Actual in the Eixample district and were very pleased with it. I think it may be a tad more than 200e per night, but it is a very nice hotel in a nice area, it was about 20 minutes from the cruise port. The hotel can arrange a taxi for you. We opted for the breakfast which was I think about 20e per person but we thought it was a good value as the buffet was extensive and they had included in the cost cappuccini which were really good.

Based on CJean's sleuthing, I looked up the Cruise Critic Roll Call for your ship, Xcel May 7th. Here you'll be able to read what plans other passengers are making on your cruise and see if you get ideas or even want to join them. It's not very active right now, but as the months go on, more and more people will join and comment. You'll have to sign up for Cruise Critic to participate. https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3112908-xcel-may-7-2027-italian-and-french-riviera/

Here's Cruise Critic homepage: https://www.cruisecritic.com/

Barcelona hotels: you can take a taxi from the airport to your hotel. Chances are you'll need a taxi to get to the port no matter which hotel you choose. There is a public bus that goes along the very large port, but I never figured it out. We've stayed near the port in the lovely H10 Hotel and still had to take a taxi. Another time we stayed on the Ramblas with about thirty others from the Cruise Critic group going to the ship and someone chartered a bus; not a hotel I'd recommend.

Our last stay in BCN a few months ago we were in the Hotel Silken, again in the Ramblas, which I chose because it has a pool on the roof for my grandchild. Nice hotel.
Bon voyage.

Thank you Elizabeth. I will check out the link you posted for me.
Have a great day

We spent half a day in the MANN, (Museum of Archeology) in Naples, and multiple parts of days going into and out of Pompeii - If all you want is to get off the ship and see something amazing, I would stick with the MANN museum as another poster said, it's nearby. This is one of our favorite museums of all times! You can just hang out on the ground floor, rest your feet on the couches outside cafe, & have something to eat on site. The statues are jaw dropping gorgeous. You can book tickets ahead, there can be longer lines without a booking.

Pompeii - I'm not sure how much time a ship excursion would really have inside Pompeii? Just a warning, the pavement stones inside Pompeii are big, uneven, and it's pretty inevitable you will end up needing to step down into street & back up onto sidewalk numerous times due to crowds. Maybe consider going to Herculaneum instead, smaller & less crowded but every bit as sensational. Bon Viaggio!

For Barcelona, you do not want to be near the cruise port OR the airport. Those are far from the center; plan to take a taxi from the airport to your hotel and a taxi from your hotel to the cruise dock.

I don't see when you are going....hotel prices vary a lot in Barcelona due not only to the influx of tourists during certain months but also due to the many conventions and congress held in the city.

I would recommend staying in the Eixample, the "newer" part of town....it is an easy walk from here to the old quarter. I would not recommend staying on Las Ramblas..it's pretty tacky and tourist-ridden, lined with chain eateries and just not appealing. A few months ago there was also construction ongoing along that street. (e aware that several streets in the city bear the name "ramble," but there is only one "Las Ramblas."

I stayed at the MAJESTIC for a week a few months ago. It's a great hotel but check to see if you can get a reasonably priced room. If not, other hotels to look at would include MONUMENT, ALMA, and CLARIS. There are many more if you step down a bit in price.....let u know..

Definitely wise to fly in a few days early to enjoy Barcelona and to make sure no travel SNAFUs pop up.

This May, we chose the Kimpton Vividora hotel in the Gothic Quarter. A good location close enough to a ton of things.

Regarding being near the airport or the cruise port, I agree with others that neither is optimal. The cruise port is super easy to get to by an assortment of options - from walking to public trans to cabs. And not particularly far from the heart of the city. When we were checking out to fly home, tons of folks were in the lobby of the hotel having the concierge arrange transportation to the cruise port, so it's one of those things that should be easy.

"Musts" are pretty individual, and places like Rome and Florence are jam packed with multiple-days worth of exploring. Museums, history, architecture, food, city "life", and more, so think about how you want to spend your precious port hours and drill down there. May should be nice weather temps still, but trending warm.

One thing I do think is a good idea would be to maximize your Barcelona time by extending more than just a couple days. For us, the flight/travel time are the worst part of trips to Europe, so maximizing as much as possible the time we're on the ground there is key. With Barcelona being where you can most easily pad your time in Europe, that's where I'd consider adding days (and day trips too).

2-3 days early is good, I’d stay central and do NOT worry about close to cruise- it’s a short cab ride.
We did a very similar trip and found we preferred to do the cruise excursions in Italy and let them deal with all the details- but to each their own. All of the ports have things easily accessible as well as harder to reach (aka when excursions can be a nice luxury) so a bit of research for you two should decide what makes the most sense. We struggled in Italy on our own with tour providers flaking on us or giving us less than advertised and saw some others having similar issues- not to scare you just be aware it’s a known issue. I’ve been told the further south the more you’ll see that.

We did the 1/2 day Pompeii it was a great amount of time then had classic Naples pizza at a very old spot (be ready to wait hours)
For Portofino we were docked about 45m away so we did a great tour that took us through some small towns, a cruise, and ended at Portofino with 3hrs to explore before bus ride back to ship.
Nice was a good wander on our own; “Florence” for us was Liverno and I didn’t like my diy options so we again went with a cruise tour 1/2 day was at a lovely farm/vineyard sampling wines and eating a freshly made multi course lunch then climbing tower of Pisa

We stayed in an apartment in Eixample near Gaudi’s casa Batllo and found the metro system easy to navigate around all the sites. The markets were not to be missed and a lot of fun; we also did a food tour of Latin quarter with Devour tours that we loved and got to try tapas, classic foods, and see gourmet shops we wouldn’t have found on our own.

Thank you all for your valuable input this far.
I will check out cruise critic as well as researching the hotels mentioned.
I am glad suggestions were to try and avoid staying near the pier. My initial thoughts were the opposite. Now my options will change.