Solo F on NCL 4/23/17 Barcelona W Carribean - Planning excusions ahead

You should go to cruisecritic.com and find the roll call for your cruise date and try to find other passengers to set up a group of 6 to 8 to book your own private driver. Or you can go to some shore excursion sites that may be looking to fill up a small tour group. This is much cheaper than using the Norwegian shore excursions.

We did the Western Med cruise on NCL Epic in May 2015. If you can get the food package, i would recommend. It allows you to book the specialty retaurants on the ship. The french and steak restaurants were the best, imo. But all the food on Norwegian was good.

For Italy, i suggest using an outfit like Joe Banana Limos. We hired JBL and went to Cinque Terre and Pisa from Livorno, and Sorrento, Positano and Pompeii from Naples. Cannes has the tender to take you to shore and you can do the city by foot. If you want to go to the nearby towns, you will need to arrange a driver or take a train. Palma Majorcca has a cheap shuttle bus to town and then can be done by foot. There is also a short bus ride from the port in Barcelona and then you can use their excellent metro. Watch out for pickpockets; i got a rub down by a bunch of girls on the metro, but did not lose anything. Sagrada Familia is recommended; you can book tickets ahead of time.

Edit: I note you embark at Barcelona which means you will have stop at Civatavecchia (where we embarked). For Rome, try Bob's Limo or RomeCabs. Have fun.

We did a trans-Atlantic on Norwegian last fall. All our excursions were organized by members of our Cruis Critic Roll Call. Find your roll call n cruisecritic.com and start reading the posts. You're pretty close to sailing, so you'll have a lot of reading to do. Good luck getting a group together or joining one.

Thank you, Roll Call it is.