This was another of those wonderful, restful days at sea. We began the packing process for the trip home and then spent a good portion of the day in the spa, reading and relaxing.
This is not part of the happening on that day, but something that I think is important to anyone planning a trip to this area.
The private tours we took were much less pricey than similar tours offered by the ship’s company. Also these tours were in groups of as few as 6 and no more than 10. That, in itself, is preferable to those tours where the group is made up of 36-40 people traveling on a large bus. In all the ports in Italy and those in Greece, for our private tours we had a driver/guide. In most situations when we arrived at a historical site this driver/guide gave us some basic information and then we were “on our own” with the driver/guide setting a certain time for us to meet her or him. At most of the sites an English-speaking guide was available “for hire”. However, if a group of people are traveling together they need to all agreed to hire this guide. If they don’t all agree and share in the cost, then it does not work very well. One such example: the cost for the guide at the Acropolis in Athens, Greece was 100 Euros for the group of 8. Not everyone in our group wanted to hire her so we didn’t. I’m sure the tour would have been much better with a guide. This was especially true of our visit to Pompeii. None of the identifying information or the handouts was posted in English. Therefore, we just wandered round looking at items that we could easily spot and wondered about everything else. Our excursion in Ephesus, Turkey did include both a guide and a driver. And, there our guide accompanied us to every site we visited and gave us information about the site. I thought it was our very best tour.
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