How much to budget for cruise excursions - Barcelona-to-Rome type trip?

[Anonymous]

We are looking into a cruise from Barcelona to Rome this summer. We only have 10 days for the trip and want to hit some Med. highlights on this trip. Leaving aside the debate over these types of cruises, which I know many on DCUM detest, what should we expect for the budget for the shore excursions? Just eyeballing it, seems like an extra $700-1000 or so per day on average for a family of 4 to go on daily tours (e.g., Pompeii from Salerno, Monaco from Nice, etc.). Does that sound right?

[Anonymous]

Probably right, maybe a bit less.

You can usually save money if you skip the official cruise tours— can often find suggestions or info on the cruisecritic.com forums— but one of the things about Med cruises is the ports are often not that convenient to what you want to see.

[Anonymous]

That’s probably right. You can go on the cruise lines website and see the potential excursions and figure out the cost pretty easily. It really depends on what you want to do and if you are willing to do excursions that aren’t through th ship. Part of that depends on how long your port days are. For a 12 hour port day, I might gamble on a private tour to Pompeii, but if you’re only in port like 6 hours definitely not. Etc. The private tours are often half as expensive or you can find stuff that is almost free to do in many cities.