7 Night Spain & France Cruise Shore Excursions

[MBuch5]

If we don't purchase any of the RC excursions... can we still leave the ship, grab a taxi, and explore the various locations ourselves? Many thanks 

[ChessE4]

7 hours ago, MBuch5 said:

If we don't purchase any of the RC excursions... can we still leave the ship, grab a taxi, and explore the various locations ourselves? Many thanks 

Absolutely.  On our last trip to the Med, one of the ports required a tender.  Excursions are given priority for the tenders.  So if you don't book an excursion, you'll just wait longer to disembark.  On ports where you dock, again, the excursion groups leave first.

There are some excursions that are "at your leisure" and provide transportation to the city center.

Enjoy!

[MBuch5]

Ah great! Many thanks Chess. We'll do the 'at your leisure' thing and see how it all goes! Thanks again

[FionaMG]

23 hours ago, MBuch5 said:

If we don't purchase any of the RC excursions... can we still leave the ship, grab a taxi, and explore the various locations ourselves? Many thanks 

If you let us know which ports some of us might be able to give you some suggestions.

If this is the itinerary from Southampton that calls at Bordeaux (La Rochelle), Bilbao, La Coruña and Paris (Le Havre), I'm doing that itinerary next year and have no intention of booking any excursions.

Here are a couple of links from my very early-stage research:

For "Bordeaux" (note that Bordeaux is actually nowhere near La Rochelle) the town itself is very visitable without an excursion.

See this link: https://www.thetravel.com/why-visit-la-rochelle-on-the-west-coast-of-france/

For Bilbao, if you've never been there before the Guggenheim Museum is on pretty much everyone's must-do list. I believe the old town is also worth seeing and you can try some tapas (they're called "pintxos" here).

In La Coruña, you can walk tp the Tower of Hercules and go up inside it if you're reasonably able-bodied. If you prefer not to walk, you can get a taxi. Note that going inside the Tower is not doable if you can't manage stairs and if you do want to go inside you need to get tickets from the booth at the bottom of the hill before heading up to the tower entrance.

Here are some pics:

Once you're done at the tower you can continue walking along the seafront and it will eventually bring you back into town by the town beach, which is lovely.

For Le Havre (if you don't want to go to Paris, which personally I wouldn't really recommend unless it's an all-time bucket-list destination that you're unlikely to get another chance to visit) you can also simply explore the town or go somewhere a bit closer than Paris.

Here's a link to a website run by some locals with lots of ideas:

https://normandielovers.fr/en/best-things-to-do-le-havre-normandy/

Also, you might want to take a look at RCB's Jenna DeLaurentis' live blog from June last year on this particular itinerary. Below is the link to the last page. I've linked that one because it has the links to all the previous pages right at the bottom, so you can read the whole thing.

https://www.royalcaribbeanblog.com/2022/06/24/anthem-of-the-seas-live-blog-day-7-le-havre-paris-france

Hope this helps. Even if it's not the exact same itinerary as yours, maybe some of the ports will be the same.

[cedricmr]

All these cities can easily be visited without an excursion (Bordeaux, La Rochelle or Le Havre). Bordeaux and La Rochelle are not next to each other, you have to check in which city the cruise arrives but if you are in one or the other, there is the possibility to discover alone.
For Bilbao, the cruise terminal is further away but there is a metro line. And the Gugenheim Museum is a must in Bilbao