Florence Florence on Your Own Excursion Reviews

hard to see both without the tour, expensive but worth it.

Provider: Royal Caribbean International

Excellent.

Provider: Celebrity Cruises

How can you say enough about Florence? You need to spend at least a week there (I have). On previous visits I never felt like standing in line for the Ufizzi Museum, but being November there was no line this time. Unfortunately I didn't discover that until I had only 1 1/2 hours left, not nearly enough.

Provider: Celebrity Cruises

Suddenly, knowing that Michalangelo, Machiavelli, Marconi, Gallileo, Marconi and others were buried in St Croces Church...they all seemed real! The squares and churches and statues are amazing.

Provider: Celebrity Cruises

We took a ship's tour. The tour was as stated, Florence on Your own and the guide was informative on the bus. We had a stop at a leather store and then were dropped off in a square. We made our way to the Medici Palace and looked around. In retrospect, we wished we'd hired the company we had in Rome, Rudy's Touring Service, as we'd have had a car and driver and seen more. But, the tour was as described and we saw as much as we could.

Provider: Norwegian Cruise Line

Our tour guide, Jon, did a fantastic job of advising us what to do and see as we drove from the port to Florence. It's a beautiful city, not as beautiful as Rome but not as crowded either. We spent the day shopping (leather and gold are good buys here), had a fantastic lunch, and saw some of the tourist hot spots (duomo and ponte vecchio). Good time.

Provider: Norwegian Cruise Line

Florence is really a city you need at least 2 days in, and to take it slowly. Much of the beauty comes from the sheer levels of detail around the churches and city, as well as the integrated history of the Medici family patronage in the city's architecture and layout. I'd recommend spending 1 day with a guide for Santa Croce, Duomo and Uffizi. It may be tiring, but is absolutely worth it to go to the top of the Duomo, but not the belltower, just the main dome. For Uffizi, definitely need tickets online, or you will wait for hours. There is great shopping near the Piazza della Republica, and near the Santa Croce. Santa Croce also has a cool leathermaking school inside. The second day could be dedicated solely to shopping. The tour company that RCI uses makes you waste time at a stupid leathershop hearing their pitch, we could have had an extra 30 minutes had we not dealt with that. We saw our tour guide in Rome the next day with Gucci bags up and down her arm, shopping -- makes you wonder what kind of kickback she was getting.

Provider: Royal Caribbean International

Pissa very nice not long enough there 45 minutes 15 spent qeuing for loo and florence was very pretty

Provider: Royal Caribbean International

This was excellent. The coach dropped us off near the main square and we had about 6 hours to do our own thing. Be aware that if you take the hop on hop off shuttle it does not go through the main historic, tourist areas, so you have to know where you are going and plan it well. Brilliant day. Will visit Florence again. Tour was pricey $148 for 2 people.

Provider: Cunard Line

Overpriced but it felt a safer way since the city is so far from the port. So so crowded and too hot to enjoy

Provider: Princess Cruises

Ridiculous to have to pay this much to be transported to and from Florence. Only booked this as we wanted a guarantee we would get back to the ship on time. Researched and could not find independent touring companies that could offer this for much less money. The train is much cheaper, but I was nervous about the distance between the port and the train station, so opted for the safe way out. The guide assigned to our bus was a little gruff and treated us like kids, but after hearing people asking her to repeat things she had over discussed several times, I can understand why she spoke this way. We had been to Florence twice before and felt competent to get where we needed. I mark this low because I thought the price was ridiculous and the guide/people on the bus were somewhat irritating. Florence on it's own deserves a 5 plus! I wish we had two days here and not in Monaco! Make sure to make reservations in advance if you want to go to the Accademia and Ufizzi. Even with an advanced reservation time, you will have to wait in line for both. Make sure to allocate 30 minutes prior to your time. You will need one hour in Accademia and 15-20 minutes to get to Ufizzi. Ufizzi can't possibly be visited in a few hours, but you will likely max out after two hours! Get audio guide at Ufizzi-interesting points and it will help you pace through 2-3 hours. We climbed to top of the Duomo, which had an incredible view! Don't do this if you have claustrophobia, as it is tight quarters and only one way traffic, with people wanting to go down when you are going up. If in a hurry, you can pay some extra fee to avoid the line. We thought the line was short, but all of these people entering at the front, made it a 40 minute wait. One day in Florence is not enough! Best to choose one or two things all out-way too hard to run between sights and get an overview!

Provider: Oceania Cruises

This tour stops at some shops pretty close to the port. It was a total waste of time. During the bus ride our guide talked about Florence and Tuscany. She was interesting. When we got to Florence she walked us to our meeting place and the we were on our own. Florence is really a beautiful city and we really liked our time there.

Provider: Norwegian Cruise Line

The Tour guide was very good and gave us plenty of info, she was very well informed about the history and what we should do in Florence. We would have licked to have more time as we had to rush to do all the main attractions in the city.

Provider: Thomson Cruises

We booked "Florence on your own" which included a bus from Livorno (where the ship was docked) to Florence, where we had 4-5 hours. We had been to Florence 5 years ago, and wanted to see the Uffitzi museum, plus walk, shop, and, of course, EAT.

Provider: Celebrity Cruises