My wife and I just returned home this week from our Best of Italy My Way tour of 13 days in northern Italy. This was our first organized tour of any kind. We thought we'd like the built in sightseeing freedom that a My Way tour provides while letting the RS group take care of all the hotel and travel arrangements. We were not disappointed. This tour included Venice, Varenna in Lake Como, Cinque Terre based in Monterosso, Florence, Assisi and Rome. We also had a special stop over and private wine tasting in the hill country town of San Gimignano. Our excellent tour manager was a young fellow from Dublin, Dara McCarthy. Being a My Way format tour, Dara was there to provide info on the towns and help answer site seeing questions but we were on our own as to what sites we saw in the towns. The tour bus was fantastic and not over crowded at all; lots of room to spread out and nap if needed. Giuseppe was our driver and he did a fantastic job particularly in navigating very narrow roads and spaces like we had in Varenna. The hotels were all situated very well for site seeing and while the styles and amenities varied, each one was better than I expected base on my past travels in Europe on my own. I will say that at the Hotel California in Florence, the overhead rain shower attachment came off and bonked me in the head so if you stay there, be aware of potential loose shower fixtures! We had the unexpected surprise of seeing Rick Steves in Monterosso and getting him to meet him at Ristorante Miky. All in all, we had a great time and we will be considering another My Way tour in the future.
Posted by
Last Frontier aka Alaska 🏔️
3595 posts
Thanks for your brief report! Glad you enjoyed!
Posted by
Vernon, Canada
32392 posts
It's great to hear that you had a wonderful time on your Italy tour, and meeting Rick would be an extra special treat. The 2020 tours are starting to be listed, so time to start planning the next one.
Posted by
2865 posts
How was your weather in early May? Did you have rain? We are planning a trip for next May and am wondering about early or late May.
Posted by
franktown, colorado
2252 posts
Thank you for your report. I haven't yet taken a My Way tour but have been curious about them. Did you do a lot of pre planning for what you wanted to do at each stop or just wing it? I've been curious as to how much guidance you are given by the tour manager. Did you have any group dinners? Ouchy for the shower head!
Posted by
OP
19 posts
Hi BethFL. We had quite a bit of rain during our tour that was conducted May 5 - 13. It was quite chilly in some of the towns as well due to wind. The Italian locals that we talked to about the weather all said it was unusual for early May - - - many of them said it was November weather in May. A British friend of ours was in Naples on vacation at the same time and she said it rained all but two days of her 10 day trip. The trade off was that the crowds were less in early May than it would be later in the month. Venice was still crowded and we felt it more there due to small size of the physical places to walk in Venice. Probably hard to avoid a crowded feeling in Venice anyway.
Posted by
OP
19 posts
Hi Andi. Because I am retired and I had lots of free time to read and plan ahead, we had set up some reserved sites / viewings in advance. Lots of our time there was just figuring out what we wanted to see or do during the time we had in each location. Personally, I prefer it that way but that's just me. Our tour manager did an excellent job of providing info to us during our bus rides to the next city by reading info to us via the bus speaker system. (I can't overstate the high level of comfort that we had on the bus. It was superb.) He was also available every morning during breakfast and early evening for help in suggesting places to go see or to eat. As for group dinners, there were no prearranged group dinners like there would be as part of a regular RS tour. Two other "foody" couples and my wife and I ended up going to some high end local places to eat but we planned those on our own. We made those selections using the info in the RS guide books so it was easy to find them.