Stay on track when the ship docks around the Mediterranean, writes Megan Singleton.
I spent 12 nights bobbing in the Mediterranean Sea and visited some great cities. Here are the top tips for my five favourites.
ROME
We decided this would be our splash-out stop and booked a VIP tour onboard the ship, which meant we had a guide and skipped the lines to get into the Colosseum, Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. It also included the 90-minute bus ride from Civitavecchia and lunch. We would not have been able to see all these incredible places if we'd been doing it on our own, so money well spent, we decided.
EPHESUS
You can book tours to Pompeii from here, but as I'd been before we thought we'd just potter around the port town and see what we could find. Taxi drivers badgered every passenger as they left the dock, so we headed for a cafe to plan our day, got chatting to the rug man and ended up booking his brother's taxi to take us everywhere: Virgin Mary's house, the ruins of Ephesus and a lunch stop.
SANTORINI
This tiny Greek island was my favourite port of all and we opted not to take an organised excursion but to freelance it. Turned out to be a great idea (this is not always the case). We rented a quad bike for the day and the two of us bombed around from the stunning hilltop village of Oia to wine tasting at a beachfront cellar door.
