Cannes was basically a beach and shopping. We enjoyed wandering around, had a great lunch in a small cafe and took in the local sights. Others who took an excursion to Monte Carlo seemed to have a great time but we could not afford to book an excursion at every port.

Our cruise was supposed to overnight in Venice and it didn’t – it stopped in Ravenna (not originally on the itinerary) prior to Venice. I didn’t realize this until I received my itinerary two weeks prior to the cruise and I didn’t really think anything of it until the day before debarkation. We realized that our airport transfer (included with our package) was for 10:00 a.m. and our flight was for 7:00 p.m. That would mean we would see none of Venice – only the inside of the airport. This was a big letdown for us. We tried to get information online but the internet wasn’t working. We tried to get help from the Shore Excursions desk but they had limited hours and there were no staff – we hoped to grab a last minute excursion as they typically end with the bus taking everyone and their luggage to the airport but they were sold out and couldn’t help us. We tried to get help from guest services and they didn’t really have any concrete information. They just assured us it would all be obvious and easy when we got off the ship…it was anything but! There are thousands of tourists exiting cruise ships and one little kiosk selling water bus tickets. There were virtually no other people outside the terminal to help people sort out where to go and what to do unless people had pre-paid for transfers/tours. There were a lot of frustrated tourists at the cruise terminal.

In the end, we decided to ditch our airport transfer, store our luggage in the cruise terminal for $5 Euro per bag and at least see St. Mark’s Square before making our own way to the airport. As soon as we docked in the morning and had internet, we found information on water buses. As you get off the ship, there is an Alilaguana kiosk selling tickets for water buses ($15 Euro per person round trip). The water bus to St. Mark’s square was 15 minutes. We had tons of time to see the square, wander around the central tourist area, grab a bite to eat and then try to find the airport. The woman at the waterbus kiosk recommended we take a city bus to the airport as it would take 40 minutes versus the 100 minutes it would take if we took a waterbus. In the end, that was a very bad decision for us as we had plenty of time to get to the airport and should have taken the waterbus.

The city buses are a little confusing and because we had not planned on every riding a city bus, we did not research this part of our trip. The bus ticket to the airport was $8 Euro. The woman selling the tickets told us to take bus #5. The buses are lined up in aisles with large aisle signs and we boarded a bus in aisle 5 instead of bus #5. Forty minutes later, we found ourselves right back where we started. Thankfully, the bus driver walked us over to where we needed to be and we had left tons of time to get to the airport. When you get on a bus, you have to scan your ticket. No one advised of this, it is written in tiny print on your ticket and there are only scanners at the front and back of the bus…but doors also open in the middle of the bus where there are no signs and scanners. Guess which doors we used to board the bus? We were packed in like sardines – lots of tourists and luggage all headed to the airport – and you couldn’t even see the scanners located at the front and back of the bus it was so crowded. About 200m before the bus stops at the airport, it stops and transit cops board the bus (funny, this did not happen on the local bus we got on by accident the first time). It is obvious that they target the tourists. We were given a $60 Euro fine (x 2 – the equivalent of $180 Cdn.) and it didn’t matter what you said – they didn’t give one hoot. There were many tourists in the same predicament as us. It was a really sour way to end the trip and a pretty shameful practice for the local transit authority. Every other form of transportation we took – water bus, monorail – worked as it should but the buses were a different story. If I had it to do over again and hadn’t been so tired and stressed, I would have delayed payment of the fine (this was an option…a more expensive one) and then simply not paid the fine when I got home. Logically, you have to ask yourself, what power does a city transit authority have once you are home? I don’t ever intend to go back to Venice so I suspect our fines would have been among the many that never get paid. Live and learn.

Coming into the port is worth the early wake up. Mountains surround the ship and the scenery is simply breath taking.

Kotor was a lot of fun. We checked it out on our own. The medieval city centre had a lot of very interesting shops and spaces to explore. We walked up to the monastery (2,000 stone steps - not for people who have health issues) and the views were spectacular. The streets are insane though as cars plough down narrow streets that are littered with tourists all scrambling to get out of the way :-).

We had no time to see Barcelona - we landed, got to the cruise terminal and left port!