Roman Holidays Package - 4 Stars

Buongiorno Tommaso,

Our trip was amazing! You are your team did a terrific job with preparing the itinerary and getting us ready for our journey. Thank you for giving us the opportunity to provide feedback. Overall, we found our itinerary to be planned well with enough time to do things that were not pre-planned. The guidebook was great, especially the restaurant lists. We had very few problems and the one time we needed to reach out to your team for help, Giulia was very responsive.

Attached is a detailed summary of our feedback. We hope it helps with planning future trips.

100% Positive Review:
1. Trastevere Food walking tour – In one word, spectacular. The guide was terrific and the places we visited were so authentic. Based on this tour, we will request 3-4 walking dinner tours on our next visit.
2. Private guide tours in general – Super personal attention; feel like the guides were able to open up and be more relaxed and humorous than with bigger groups. This is a must.
3. Florence – loved the City and the history hidden within the City.
4. Restaurants you Recommended – we ate at 75% of the restaurants you recommended and all positive reviews.
5. Day trip from Siena to Florence stopping in the Brunello region for a wine tasting – our guide was a AAA+ and the vineyard (family run) was beautiful.
6. Galleria Borghese – this turned out to be one of our favorites and we loved the huge park surrounding the Galleria.
7. Pompei – breathtaking – a must to visit. Guide was an AAA+.
8. Path of the Gods Trek - breathtaking – guide was an AAA+. Our trek took approx. 2.5 hrs. It was so pretty that we would have loved a 4-6-hour trek.
9. Capri Boat Excursion – another must and perfect at the end of our trip since very relaxing. The captain and his mate were terrific.
10. Our Travels from North to South – starting in the historic inner city of Siena, to the hidden treasures of Florence, to Rome and its historic sites, to Pompei and finally to the coast was the perfect progression and the right order of seeing the cities we planned.
11. Statue of David – a must! It was by far the most breathtaking and thought-provoking statue we saw.
12. Your Guide & Ticket Books – perfect for planning and information.
13. Having 80% of our Trip Pre-Planned w/Guides/Tours – a must.
14. Train rides from one city to another – the best way to travel. Easy to locate and relaxing (and as a plus, the cars we were in were not crowded).

Tweaks in the Planning:1. Vintage Fiat 500 Tour – took a bit for all to get registered (unproductive time) in order to drive, bike, etc. Driving a 50-year old small auto with a just as old transmission was more fun on paper than reality. Would have preferred to take a small group bus to more than one (1) vineyard for the excursion. In the time it took to register, park, ensure we were all together, etc., we could have visited three (3) vineyards. We would not recommend this Fiat excursion as a way to see Tuscany.
2. Florence Food Tour – based on the 10a start, this tour took up most of our morning and afternoon. After the Trastevere evening tour, our preference would be a similar dinner Florence tour so we would have the entire day to explore other activities – the guide for the tour was AAA+.
3. In Rome, we would have preferred to be in a hotel located closer to the Colosseum. The location of the Palazzo Navona Hotel felt remote from the points of interest we wanted to see (other than the Vatican).
4. Colosseum and Forum Tour – scheduling this tour late in the afternoon (upon arrival) was not great. This was high on our list of “must sees” and we didn’t get to spend any time on our own exploring the Forum area. We spent 2 of the 3 hours at the Colosseum and the Forum was closing 15 minutes after we were done with the tour. Would recommend a morning tour to allow for time to exploring after. The tour itself was breathtaking and the guide was an AAA+.
5. Scheduling the Colosseum/Forum upon arrival in Rome followed by an early start for the Vatican the next day was rough. We crashed after the Vatican tour. We were in Rome for 4 nights – this could have been scheduled better.
6. Layover in Newark – if possible, a five (5) hour layover in Newark would not be our preference after a nine (9) hour flight. We realize this could have been caused by the Air France cancellation.

On a side note, while the Vatican was must, it was not our favorite visit. It was a bit overwhelming and per the time allotted for the tour, an extremely fast paced tour. While we can say that we saw the Vatican, we really didn’t see the Vatican. No question that the number of people visiting makes it a challenging tour.

Thanks again for making our first trip to Italy so memorable. We are already looking forward to our next visit and will definitely reach out to you when we are ready to start planning.

Grazie mille,

Carole & George