Shore excursions from the ship are great. Sometimes expensive, but always convenient, they are designed specifically to make sure you get a taste of what each port or location can offer.
For each excursion you meet in a specific location where you are given a coloured sticker to identify you as part of the group. ( this also lets pickpockets and thieves in each place know that you are a tourist from a cruise ship as you walk around). Each group is sent off the ship one at a time, which is when the race for the front seat of the bus starts. I have seen old people with walking sticks use them as shields as they run to get there first. To do this you have to also take out the two theme characters at the end of the gangplank in every port (pizza chefs in Naples, gladiators in Rome, goddesses in Athens etc) that you are expected to have your photo taken with as you leave the ship and then buy later. Lou is more into that than me. I just duck around the back of them and get going.
There is a hierarchy to the seats on the bus. Front seats are for the fastest (but are supposed to be for the people with mobility issues who have ignored the advice that the excursion is strenuous and have come along with their walking frames anyway). Next best are the seats near the side door, especially if they have a table. I can't work out why; there's no cabin service, but that's just how it is. Third are the seats with the biggest glass so you can take photos from the bus. These are the ones we try for. The back seat is what you get if you are not on the ball when the race begins.
Once you arrive at you destination, you are asked to don lanyards with radios and ear phones so the guide can talk to you. There is always someone who can't get theirs to work, until another in the group shows them how to turn the volume up. Then, like sheep, you follow an object: a flower, a lollipop, or a bright umbrella, as a group. Most people group as close to the guide as they can, taking up all of the road or footpath, never looking around to see if someone else want to pass. The other day an old Italian gentleman on a bicycle approached at speed ringing his bell and I can't really be sure what he said but the word bastardos was used so I am pretty sure he was frustrated as he pushed through the group. (Is it mean that I thought it was funny to see the man with the walking stick jump out of the way?)
A few times we have stopped to take photos and been left behind. This is not a bad thing a long as you can remember where the meeting point to go home is. It is customary to tip the guide and the driver at the end of the tour (they share what is given). Some days those drivers, who have parallel parked a tour bus in a parking bay the size of a ten cent piece, deserve all the tips they can get. Today, I tipped the guide for Lucca 5€ but only because she stopped singing Nessun Dorma after the second chorus outside Puccini's old music school. She would have got 10€ if she had not sung at all.
I am sad that we are nearly at the end if our shore excursions. Not that I'll miss them, but because I finally had a great strategy to get to the bus first!
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