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My Way Italy tour - May 29th to June 10th

Posted by (Central North Carolina, US) on

My wife and I are getting prepared for our very first trip to Europe coming up in just five short months. We have booked our flights (coming from Raleigh, NC area) and will stay an extra night in Venice (before the tour) and Rome before heading back home. Already have those nights confirmed with hotels as well. I was just curious if we might be able to connect with others booked for this trip and perhaps compare notes on things to do while visiting. Anybody else going that might be able to share some insights with a couple of travel newbies? Obviously, I'm reading through both RS books on Venice and Rome, as well as many of these forum posts to continue taking notes in my Italy notebook.

Wife is interested in most of the "must see" sites and activities like Coliseum, Sistine Chapel, Gondola ride, cooking class, etc. I'm more into finding out-of-the-way sights and shops to explore. If we have the money and energy, I think another RS tour might be in our future for 2023 and beyond as well.

Posted by
7921 posts

We have participated in the cooking class in Rome by Chef Andrea and definitely recommend it. His website is www.cookingclassesinrome.com

Since you’re on a My Way tour, be sure to line up a tour for the Vatican ahead of time. You can pair up with another couple for the gondola ride, if interested - no need to reserve ahead of time.

It will be more difficult to find “out-of-the-way” sights since you’re heading to the most popular places in Italy. My best advice is to walk away from the main walking routes in Venice, Florence, etc. which will also give you better options for the less “tourist menu” restaurants.

Have a great time!

Posted by
32 posts

I've just sent Chef Andrea a request for reservations. Thanks for the tip, Jean. And yes, I realize that my finding "out of the way" places in Rome or Venice or Florence is somewhat futile but I guess what I meant to say is to find the places that are the least like a tourist trap. I've definitely been studying various maps of the cities and plan to visit neighborhoods in the mornings and early evenings for shopping and our RS audio tours. We are both very excited about our first trip abroad.

Posted by
2311 posts

Have you looked at the scrapbooks in the archives? If you’re not familiar with that feature, hit the “Our Tours” button and there is a section for scrapbooks. You can check out the scrapbooks for the My Way tour as well as ones for Rome, Florence, etc..We’re headed out🤞🏻on this tour in May. We’ve been to Rome, Florence and Cinque Terre before with several other RS tours and are looking forward to exploring new things in those cities. We’ll look for food and cooking tours in those places and hit things we missed the last time.

We’re doing the My Way Italy tour following the Best of Sicily tour. It will be our first tour to Venice so we’re hoping to add at least 1, if not 2, extra days to Venice. We’ll book a guided tour for a few sites, and a chichetti tour. We’ll do Murano on our own as my husband is a glass-blower. I’ve been researching Varenna and Assisi for the best way to see those place - I really want to see some of the gardens in the Lake Como area. Cinque Terre will mostly just be wandering in the towns. On our previous trip to Florence we went to the Uffizi and Accademia, but missed the Piti Palace and Boboli gardens. We’ll try for some kind of food tour there. It will be our 3rd trip to Rome. We were there in 2019 with the RS Best of Southern Italy tour. On that visit we scheduled a private guide, Sonia Tavoletta to guide us through the Vatican complex. It was so worth it.

Posted by
16660 posts

It's great that you've chosen to arrive one day earlier than the tour starts, and are staying a day after the tour ends! Still, I think that gives you minimal time in both Venice (2.5 days) and especially Rome (2.5 days) so hitting the highlights may be all you may be able to fit into the time that you have.

But to make you feel better about falling into a 'tourist trap', we've yet to find one of those in Rome. If I was to choose one, it was the Mamertine Prison, which I wouldn't recommend to anyone outside of some scant archeological value. With only 2.5 days, you also don't have a lot of time to spend on lesser visited attractions so make The Wife happy and see the biggies; there are good reasons why people flock to them. We've never done a cooking class, BTW, nor spent much time shopping as there has alway been too many other things to do/see!

2.5 days: the Vatican Museums and St Peter's; Colosseum/Palatine/Forum; some of Rome's best churches; Galleria Borghese; Pantheon; Piazza Navona; a general wander about... There. That's what you can do during the day. In the evening, take a stroll around Trevi Fountain, the Spanish Steps, Ponte San Angelo, and other monuments n Rome that are wonderfully lit up after dark.

Plan a future trip to Rome to explore some of her other treasures: a long walk on the Appia Antica; Baths of Caracalla; even more of Rome's fabulous old churches; Citimtero Verano or Cimitero Acattolico; a catacomb or two; etc. etc.

Posted by
32 posts

bumping this thread (just for another chance to catch others on our tour??)

So, in a simple update on my earlier post, we've now reserved 6 tours while in Italy. They are:

2guides4venice for a St. Mark's Basilica tour
Walks of Italy for a Dine around Venice tour
The Roman Guy for Florence in a Day tour
Alla Madonna del Piatto cooking school class near Assisi
Sonia Tavoletta for a Collosseum, Forum and Palatino tour
Walks of Italy Pristine Sistine tour on our last day in Rome.

I still need to investigate some fun things to do in Varenna and Monterosso but for now, I think we can enjoy simply walking around the beautiful landscapes, doing some local shopping and eating our way across Lake Como or down through the Cinque Terre. Any and all suggestions would be quite welcome if you've been to either of these locations before.

Mr. B.

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