excursions help please!
 

Our family of 5 is booked on the explorer on August for 7days from Venice to Istanbul and back. How easy is it to just grab a cab at the dock to see the different cities? It's probably alot cheaper than booking 5 individual day excursions! We visit Dburovnik, Olympia, Corfu, Athens, Mykonos, Santorini and Isanbul. Which cities should we absolutely take the tour? Thanks for ANY information!

Don't bother taking tour in Dburonvnik. It is very small and you can enjoy just wandering the small streets and shops. In Corfu, we rented a van for 3 couples at a car rental just right outside the port area and we had lots of fun touring the north part of the island.

We are on the Explorer also. Any teenagers?

I'm going in Sept. When are you going?

We are going Aug 1, 2003 from Athens

Purplesage,

When are you goin? I'm going September 12th,

Great itinerary.
Of those ports, we were in Istanbul and Athens, in June 2001.
I had organised private guides prior to the cruise. They were all outstanding.I really liked knowing I had guides set up and that I was going to get an English speaking guide. Sometimes the taxi drivers are not that fluent and I wanted someone who would tell us about each place.Every guide was reliable and went out of their way to accommodate us.

Here is an exerpt from my "trip report"
In Istanbul, we used Mehmet Ozbalci from Tur Fantastik Tourism Travel agency http://www.turfantastik.com
Email [email protected]
Tel (0212) 589 33 25 (0212)529 89 71He was excellent and I cannot recommend him enough. Everything went very smoothly from the pick-up at the airport to the accommodation he organised (at a hefty discount) to negotiating prices with vendors, none of whom were relatives!

In Athens, we had contacted George the taxi driver from Matt Barrets website
[email protected], He sent his son and a friend (Nikkos?) who was excellent. He spoke excellent English and was very sophisticated and informative. We did a 10 hour tour in his air conditioned Mercedes taxi and they took us all over Athens and to Cape Sounion where we had an excellent lunch at a fish restaurant and visited the temple of Poseidon. Price was $25 and hour for 4 of us.
I was very impressed with both Istanbul and Athens. they were so much nicer than what I had expected.

If you don't get guide recommendations for the other ports, go to google and type in each place name and private guides. You ccan also try the baords on cruise-critic.com


Have a wonderful cruise.