Need shore excursion advice for Royal Princess Great Britain to Europe
 

We are booked on the Royal Princess July 5, and would like the scoop on the optional shore excursions. If you have been on this itinerary, please give advice on the good shore excursions...Plymouth, Cork, Dublin,Rosyth, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Zeebrugge, and Le Havre. We have two girls ages 13 and 15 who will be with us. Thanks for the advice!

We are on the Royal on August 10. So far we've booked a car rental in Le Havre to visit Rouen and the landing beaches, a car rental in Cork to go out to Killarney, and the ship's tour to Edinburgh. In Zeebruges, we will be taking the train to Bruges to do our own walking tour which we will also do in Amsterdam. The ship has a $4 tranfer into those two towns. <BR><BR>The jury is still out about Dublin...may do the ship's tour to the Castle and Book of Kells in the morning and do walking tour of the Georgian area on our own.<BR><BR>Plymouth also looks easy to do on your own.<BR><BR>Our itinerary does Bilbao and Bordeaux instead of Hamburg.<BR><BR>Have a great trip!<BR><BR>Tania<BR><BR><BR><BR>

I, too, am booked on this cruise though on an earlier sailing. I am trying to figure out how to get from Le Verdon where we dock into Bordeaux which is almost 100 kms. away. The ship's excursions are really expensive and we'd like to just wander around the city.
Also, I've been to Dublin before and there is a Hop on Hop Off bus which tours the city constantly, driving by all the points of interest. Very inexpensive way to see the city on your own. There is the same service in Cork, which we will use this time.

I did this itinerary last year and had a great time. The Royal was all I had hoped for. We did all ports on our own without any problems. Well, we could have used a better map in LeHavre where we rented a car. But we did get to the beaches -Omaha and the Museum. Had a great time wandering in Caen. But the all time favorite was Zeebrugge where we took the train (ran every half hour) to Brugge and just wandered around the town. Hamburg was a pleasant surprise, I knew it had been heavily bombed during WWII so I expected very modern buildings but it was just lovely. We found all towns easy to walk. I had copied maps from several guide books and the map given out by Princess was very helpful. I am so jealous.

We are taking this cruise in July. I would like to know if you can hire tour guides at the piers or do I need to set something up ahead of time? Last year in New Zealand we were able to hire tour guides at all the ports when we docked which was great. Please advise if you have taken this cruise before and have any advice. Thanks.

Definately plenty of taxis to hire at the pier but we found that all ports were very friendly to us &quot;do it yourselfers&quot;. Now we did do a lot of walking and if that is going to be a problem then just hire a cab for the day.

I am going too on June 16th (12 days trip). But this intinerary is different...it will be entirely England, Scotland &amp; Ireland with a side stop to LeHarve (Paris).

I want to know what do you think of any places thats your fave and why? Any town that we must used shore excursion? We are the type to wander around and walk a lot but dont want to miss anything important!

We are doing: Falmouth, england... Holyhead, Wales...Dublin, Ireland...Greenock (Glasgow) Scotland...Invergordon (inverness) Scotland, Kirkwall, Orkney Islands, Scotland...LeHarve(paris),France...Rosyth (edinburgh) Scotland... Waterford, Ireland

Hi Susan,
Take a look at the portcompass.com website. We used them in South America last month and were very happy with the tours. Sometimes they were half the price of the ship tours, sometimes not much different. Personally, I don't like to wait and negotiate on the pier (too much wasted time and energy) so they were a good compromise. I usually do a lot of research and know just what I want to do in port.
BTW our 31day So. Am trip was on the Royal Princess - one of our favorite ships.