Cruise passengers at La Spezia

More than most people expect, and 2026 is unusual.

For the first time in over 13 years, some passengers at La Spezia are being landed by tender — by small boat from a ship at anchor — under an ordinance of the Capitaneria di porto, because works on the new pier make it temporarily impossible for the largest ships to berth alongside.

Molo Italia is in the city itself, about 300 meters from the Cruise Terminal and right beside the ferry dock. Landing there is the easy version: you step off into La Spezia.

Molo Garibaldi is inside the commercial port, so the shuttle is still needed and the day begins exactly as it does on an alongside call.

The terminal operator puts up a mobile reception structure at both moli each morning, which tells you how genuinely uncertain the split is. Two further details worth carrying with you: the windows 07:30–09:30 and 17:30–20:00 are kept clear for commercial shipping movements, and whether tender runs are throttled during them is not stated anywhere. And tender capacity throttles the flow in both directions, so a tender day is a materially shorter day ashore than the schedule suggests.

One last thing. Reviews and port guides written about the 2025 season describe a different port entirely — 2025 was a normal alongside year. If your research is a year old, it is describing something that is not happening this season.

Now subtract. Off the gross figure comes the disembarkation queue, the shuttle ride, the walk to wherever you are meeting anyone, and the security check on the way back in — routine checks run at roughly 15% of movements, rising to 100% if the vessel requests it. On a tender day, subtract considerably more.

And subtract one more thing that is not a queue: all-aboard time is earlier than sailing time. Your usable day ends at all-aboard, not at the departure time printed on your itinerary.

All-aboard is earlier than sailing. Conventionally about 30 minutes earlier, though at least one major line’s own terms say a full hour. It is line-specific and ship-specific, and the number that governs your day is the one printed in the daily program delivered to your cabin — not a number on any website, including this one.

Every cruise passenger has read some version of this sentence, and here it is verbatim from Royal Caribbean:

When you book a shore excursion through Royal Caribbean, we guarantee that if your tour is delayed, the ship will wait for you… The ship will not wait for any guest faring on their own.

That is the line’s own wording about independent travel, and we would rather you read it here than be surprised by it.

So this page gives you the arithmetic and your ship gives you the all-aboard time. Put the two together before you book anything, with anyone.

This is worth two minutes of your attention, because the problem has been documented twice at the exact spot where you will be standing.

La Spezia’s local police have reported catching unlicensed drivers loading American cruise passengers at Largo Fiorillo, by the cruise terminal:

• 12 June 2025 — six American cruise passengers, a vehicle parked in a no-stopping zone, a driver from Prato working for a Florence company with no private-hire authorization. €2,064 fine, immediate license suspension, vehicle seized for confiscation.
• 27 July 2026 — seven American passengers in a nine-seat van, booked from abroad through an online tourism platform for a Pisa and Florence excursion. The driver claimed they were acquaintances sharing expenses; the passengers said otherwise. Fine, license suspension of four to twelve months, vehicle seized. The officers let the tourists carry on with their day.

Two reported incidents is not an epidemic, and we are not going to describe it as one. But both involved passengers who had booked in good faith and had no way of telling.

There is no public register you can search. Italy’s national private-hire register sounds searchable — its legal name translates as national public computerized register — but access needs institutional credentials, and nobody booking from Ohio or Surrey can look an operator up in it.

What you can check, with your own eyes, in ten seconds at the curb:

• the noleggio badge displayed inside the windshield and on the rear window;
• the rear private-hire plate, which carries the issuing comune’s crest and a progressive number;
• the carta di circolazione, if you ask to see it.

Any legitimate operator will show you all three without hesitating. There is one more test that needs no documents at all: a licensed NCC works only on a booking agreed in advance and cannot pick passengers up off the street the way a taxi can, so anyone offering you a ride at the terminal exit is not working legitimately, whatever is written on the car.

Prime Drive is the trading name of La Spezia Transfer NCC, VAT 01556400115.

Close enough that both are real options, and closer than most guides say.

• Molo Italia, for the Portovenere and Cinque Terre boats: about 300 meters from the Cruise Terminal, under a five-minute walk.
• La Spezia Centrale station: 1.2 km in a straight line, roughly 25 minutes on foot, flat and largely pedestrianized. The walking route is a little longer than the straight line, which is why the time looks generous for the distance.

You will read on a number of sites that the terminal is 3 km from the historic center. It is not. The terminal is a few hundred meters from Piazza Europa, and that 3 km figure appears to have been copied from site to site without anyone checking it.

For context on scale: La Spezia handled 736,312 cruise passengers across 195 calls in 2025, an all-time record. Published totals for that year vary slightly between sources depending on whether they count total movements or disembarkations, so treat the figure as the right order of magnitude rather than an exact count. Roughly 5% of the port’s cruise activity is embarkation — this is overwhelmingly a transit port, and the whole town is set up around one-day visitors.

Your cruise card and government-issued photo identification, in the great majority of cases.

This is genuinely line-specific, though, and we are not going to state a single universal rule that might be wrong for your ship. Your daily program and the guest services desk are the authority on what your line requires, and it takes thirty seconds to ask.

Because that is how the cruise lines label this port, and it causes real confusion.

Royal Caribbean lists it as Florence / Pisa (La Spezia), which is accurate in that both cities are reachable and misleading in that neither is close. Florence is about 150 km and 1 h 45 to 2 hours each way. Pisa is about 78 km and an hour.

What the label does not mention is the thing La Spezia is genuinely the port for: the Cinque Terre, whose nearest village is 28 minutes away by road. A great many passengers do not realize this until they are already on board. If you have been planning a Florence day because that is what your itinerary says, it is worth at least looking at the alternative before you commit.

• Every trip from La Spezia, with honest driving times.
• Two Cinque Terre villages — the arithmetic that fits most port days.
• Portovenere and Lerici — the shortest day, and the one for anyone who would rather not spend the morning in a car.
• Pisa and Florence, and why it is tight.

Not every day at this port is an excursion. Passengers do join and leave ships here, and that day is a plain transfer rather than a tour: the terminal to a hotel, or to an airport. Ten airports are driven, from Pisa to Rome at 406.5 km, so a long-distance transfer is ordinary work rather than an exception. Airport transfers takes them one at a time.