The tour guides were great, the itinerary was mostly well-planned, and the transportation and hotels were excellent. The service from the staff at all three hotels was superb, and outstanding in Florence at the Hotel Lungarno. The location of the hotels was also absolutely outstanding; I was able to walk to a few extra places because we were so centrally located.
The tour guides were all good, and very friendly and responsive. We especially liked Maria, in Venice, and we enjoyed our walking tour in Florence. Our tour guide for the Colosseum in Rome ran back when I wasn’t able to walk across the stones to get to the Forum and brought me an umbrella for shelter from the sun, which was thoughtful.
Once communication was established with Barbara on Whatsapp, we had really good communication. She answered a question for us and also helped us get back a bag that had been left on the van after the trip from Bologna to Florence. She was also really helpful making dinner reservations for our group. Many thanks to her!
Early on, I’d have liked more communication. It wasn’t clear to me that a tour of the Doge’s Palace in Venice had been left off of our itinerary until it was too late to do anything about it. It seems like that could have been scheduled for the day of our arrival. We got to the hotel around 10:30 am and had nothing scheduled until 4 pm.
The tour of Bologna was okay, but we would have preferred to see a few more things in Venice that day.
The Hotel in Florence had a high marble tub that was hard for a handicapped person to get in and out of. The concierge at the hotel managed to get us tickets to go inside the Duomo. This was a major item on my list of things we wanted to see, but somehow it wasn’t on our tour.
We might have liked another destination after the Vatican museum tour on Sunday, June 25. A few of our group visited the Capuchin Crypt and enjoyed it, but they didn’t know where they were headed when they set off after lunch, so some of us didn’t get to go with them and would have liked to.
There were so many–every experience was special. It was a good tour.
For me, the top two special experiences were the boat ride to Murano with glass-blowing demonstration, and the trip to Orvieto. We enjoyed the brief tour and then some time on our own to eat lunch and wander around.
Thank you,
Jeanne H. Griggs (Mount Vernon – OH) – June 2022
