Wino, like you I really wanted to explore these areas. I found there was a lot more that I wanted to do in Italy than could be fit into a port day or two. So after I became frustrated with MSC, I booked a different Transatlantic cruise on NCL. I did make a few sacrifices though, I went from the 18 day itin, to a 12 day. Of course the price dropped some, because of that. The NCL cruise departs from Barcelona Spain instead of Genoa, so we're most likely going to fly into Rome, spend a couple of days there exploring, then taking the train to Pisa, spending a week in a Villa we've rented along with a rental car, spend the week touring Northern Italy and South France. Then we'll take the train from Pisa to Barcelona and spend a day precruise exploring that city. That way I am really getting what I want out of this trip. Instead of spending my vacation dealing with customer service issues.