I am booked on a cruise with several Ports of Call-Spai, France and Italy. I want to take some excursions but want to book with the tour operators at the dock instead of the ones offered by the cruise company to save costs. Does anybody know if the tour operators are available at the pier of the Ports of Call and is it really worth it to save the money?
Come to our meeting this Saturday, Panera in the Aspen Leaf shopping center, NW corner of Mineral and Santa Fe at 10 AM and will give you a very complete answer. Also sign up at Cruisecritic.com for your ship to hook up with other people who might want to share local tours. In short the harbor will be crawling with tour operators including taxi drivers who often will give very good deals on tours especially if you know what you want to see and do. Use the internet to research what is available in every port. Also, there are guidebooks for cruise ports.
Frank, it's Aspen Grove, not Aspen Leaf.
Aspen Leaf ? Aspen Grove? Close enough. He will find it if he wants to.
It is at Santa Fe and Mineral,correct?
Yep !! It is also the last stop on the SW Light Rail line. We have been on six European cruises. Have hit just about every major port between Russia and Turkey.
Hi Steven, I prearrange private tours or else sign up on cruise critic's roll calls for small group ( 10- 16 people)shore excursions. I feel we get better quality. In a couple of cases, we've paid almost the same price as the ship's, but was only the two of us so we didn't have to go see the "cameo carving" , for example, and oriented the tour towards what we like best.
In the Caribbean, there's usually people soliciting for tours after security, maybe someone else can advise if this is true for other ports.