KalmKruiser

From what I have read and seen my two cents on that is that you can really go either way. I would definitely book sooner than later as things seem to sell out fast, personally I would also make sure you aren't settling on doing something you may not be as interested in just because it's through RC excursions. This is our first time out of North America and in Europe so we are not well versed in any aspect of navigating cities and have not grown up with use of public transportation. All in all we are erring on the side of caution and booking anything we can through the cruise excursions just for the benefit of the peace of mind. With the exception of Athens because they had a weirdly small amount of excursion options which i thought was crazy for a city that big! Literally I wanted to do best of Athens but it has been sold out like almost a year in advance!

Yeah we were trying to save and found a good deal through turkish airlines so we just have quick layovers in instanbul, which is a pretty cool city and easy to find multiples avenues of transportation out of if there were to be an issue with the connecting flight to Rome. I haven't seen anything beyond the normal issues most airlines have with Turkish, although I am sure there are horror stories.

We live in the Dallas area and are sailing out of Rome in September on a Wednesday and are flying out the Saturday night before as reference. There's always a cheap hotel or airbnb option somewhere nearby.

Oh wow that's crazy! There's nothing you can really do about that unless you catch it in the moment or always hold your bag in front of you in enclosed crowded spaces. For Athens we are thinking about using With locals to get a private guide for 6 hours to take us to all the sites, the one I've talked to is wanting 400 for the time, and says it will be about 40ish for tickets each person when there. From looking this seems like a good deal to get as much done in a day as possible. We would still have time left after that if we wanted to explore some more.

I did read your blog, looks like an amazing time and I found it very helpful! Did you have Athens on your itinerary as well?

My SO and I have these excursions booked for our cruise coming up in September. Just wanted any feed back for this cruise itinerary, ship (odyssey), and these excursions if anyone has any experience with them! Were also doing Athens but were going to do that outside of Royal as they didnt really have many good options and the one they did have got booked up super early. Thank you for any help!