Hop on hop off bus tours in Rome

I am never sure how to react to "see a lot of bad reviews" since I have no idea what the bad reviews were about. It kind of meaningless. We did the Archeobus tour on Sunday which was very good. Years ago we use another hop on/off bus in Rome and it was fine. Maybe our standards are not very high we want the transportation and the commentary. We have found speaker ports that didn't work -- more to another. Traffic makes the bus slow and sometimes off schedule but who is in a hurry.

We used the Trambus Open 110. It also includes the Archeobus (takes you to the Catacombs). They're OK. The problem is that they go around and around and around in heavy traffic. You can waste a lot of time. But if you want to use it to take a tour of Rome or get off and on close to what you want to visit, it's good. You could move faster in the bus, metro, taxi or even if you walk in Rome. When I see bad reviews like this, I wonder if people are expecting toooo... much? It is what it is! I only use it as a supplement. It's not my only means of transportation or information. http://www.trambusopen.com/en/110open.cfm

I took the archeotour bus as well, and enjoyed it. I'm sure the 110 is a good one, too, but I find Rome compact enough to walk. If you have the patience, some of the minibusses take you to smaller streets and the fare is the normal rate. Those hop-on-hop-off busses can get pricey.

Gary, what bus company did you use for your Hip Hop tour.

I too am looking for a HOHO bus for Rome. I have also read a lot of bad reviews but I agree that I think that people are expecting too much. The only thing that I am concerned about is that they pick up every 30 minutes or so. We will be in Rome on 10/10 so I am hoping that it will not be as crowded as the summer. We have been to Rome several times before and will be using this bus mainly for transportation. Any suggestions?

It was not our first visit to Rome but we loved the hoho bus tours. It's a good way to get the lay of the land and visits all the places you want to see anyway. We usually use the subway but this was a nice break for the day.

I think they are basically all very similar and in fact many of the bus companies share stops. BUT we learned the hard way that some bus companies stop running by around 6PM. We bought day passes at the Colesium around noon and unfortunately didn't get much use out of them. We'll know better next time...