Italy sightseeing
 

My husband and I are taking a Med. Cruise in May 2004. We are stopping in Nice, Rome, Florance, Naples, and Malta. We are planning on renting a car in Nice and Florance. We will approximately 10 hours in each port. What are the must see's. When we arrive in Naples we will probably take a tour. What are the must see's? Capri, Pompai, etc.

Do not rent a car in Florence. Driving around the city is not the best way to tour it! With only 10 hours, you really don't have time to drive outside the city, and there's plenty to see in Florence.
As for Naples, I'm not sure if you can cover both Pompeii and Capri in 10 hours.

Hi
If you click at the top of this screen on "Destinations" and go to the appropriate cities, you can get lots of ideas of the highlights in each place.

I will add that if you want to visit the two most famous museums in Florence, the Uffizi and the Accademia, I suggest you arrange for reserved tickets in advance--no point in spending a lot of time waiting in line.

Anitas: Can you tell me what cruise line you booked your cruise through? My husband and I are planning on taking a Mediterranean cruise in 2004 as well but I don't even know where to start looking. Thanks!

Rome--Vatican, Coliseum, ruins
Pompei--ruins
Capri--coast, villages
Taormina--my mother's favorite part of her trip to Italy, along with Rome.
Sicily if you can get there.

I agree that Florence is very walkable. If you are there for only a day you definitely do not need a car. We were there four days and never needed one in that length of time.

In Florence, as previously mentioned, do not miss the Academia (David), and the Uffizi, as well as the Duomo, Baptistry, Ponte Vechio, Pitti Palace, and Boboli Gardens. I'm sure there are more places that I'm leaving out....but then again, you do only have 10 hours.

Enjoy Italia!

Hi! My husband & I just did a Celebrity Cruise in Sept hitting most of the same spots that you mention. Like others have said, don't waste your money/time getting a car in Florence. If you are landing in Livorno, we took a taxi to the train station to Florence. One-way, it took us about 2 hr 10 min. A great portion of our day was spent traveling just to get to Florence. Make sure you make reservations for DAVID, otherwise you will waste your precious time in Florence in line to see him. Also, if you want to see the Uffizi, make reservations. If you want to go to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, make reservations.
What we saw....David, the Duomo cupola (dome), the Pontevecchio, and the Central Market. We would have done more Duomo stuff but each facet of the church had its own line and its own fee. We felt we covered the best part going up to the top and seeing out all over Florence. Florence has a lot of traffic and I didn't think the street signs were well marked. Also, everyone uses mopeds so if you were going to rent something, get a scooter. I couldn't even tell you where to park if you had a car. There are so many pedestrians in Florence that it also makes driving difficult, I would imagine.
As for Nice, our cruise landed in Villefranche, close to Nice. We took the bus to Monaco and the train back. It's cheap and gets you where you want to go. Again, I wouldn't get a car but it's your call. With our time in this region, we did what we wanted to do on public transportation alone.
I loved what we did in Naples so I will give you my itinerary for the day. We were off the boat at 7:17am and headed right over to catch the ferry over to Capri. The ticket, per person, was 12 Euro. It took ~45 minutes and we arrived in Capri early enough to find out that the Blue Grotto was closed that day due to high tides. So we took the funicular up to Capri town, where most everything was closed because we got there so early. We enjoyed cafe and watch the town open up and fill up with tourists. The view from up top was spectacular. Very upscale shopping on Capri. When we were done ~10:30am, we headed down on the funicular where the line to go up was huge! About 3 trip loads were waiting to go up...worth it for us to have arrived early.
We purchased ferry tickets over to Sorrento. I think it cost about 19 Euro for the 2 of us. From where the ferry lands in Sorrento (I really like Sorrento and wished that we had spent more time there...oh well....next time), you can purchase a combo bus/train ticket for like, 1.10 Euro/pp. The bus drives you up a steep hill and the 2nd stop is the train station. We caught the train to Pompeii, where we had 3 hours to roam in the ruins before boarding the train back to Naples. I think the cost of the train this time was about 1.50 Euro.
I thought Naples was definitely worth missing. A lot of crime. I didn't get a good feeling there and a few people on our cruise ship were robbed. We had been approached by a guy selling 1 watch. Who sells 1 watch? Someone that just ripped it off of someone else's wrist. The town just gave me the creeps and I couldn't even find an open pizzeria near the cruise ship to try their famous Napoli pizza. Anyway, I digress.
From what I've heard, Nice has a nice beach, topless, and good shopping. But not much else. We never made it there because we just wanted to hang out and drink cafe after our big day in Monaco.
We landed in Civitavecchia, which is at least 90 minutes away from Rome. By the time we got there, we only had 6 hours to roam in Rome. The Colosseum was closed the day we were there and so was the Roman Forum. Some Italian strike that day. Figures...
The ferry rides were wonderful from Naples to everywhere else in the area.
I didn't go to Malta.
Email me if you have any questions. I hope you found all my writing to be helpful.
Have a great time!

Thanks for all the responses. We are taking RCCL from Barcelona. It was the only 7 day cruise available during May. We booked it through www.cruiseleaders.net. They had the best price that I could find. Our agent is Aliza. Very helpful.

We had not planned on visting Florence our idea was to rent a car in Livorno and driving to Pisa, then to Siena and loop back up to Livorno. Is this doable in 8 hours?

It might be do-able, but I personally would skip Pisa. We went there on a tour and I found the place to be extremely touristy. Driving through the Tuscany region is fantastic. Yes, see Sienna and also visit San Gimignano and other Tuscan towns like Montelpucino. Enjoy!

Hi,

For your Livorno stop, I suggest that since you only have eight hours go to Lucca. It's one hour from Livorno Centrale station.

On your way back, if there is time, you can stop in Pisa and look at the Tower.