Presto Tours of Rome - Are they any good?

We used Presto Tours for our guided tour of the Vatican (3-hr tour). I was impressed with the tour guide and would not hesitate to use Presto again for other tours. The tour guide definitely made our Vatican tour informative and entertaining and I was surprised that he was able to answer what seemed like obscure questions that I & others asked; he definitely knew his stuff! While I can't comment specifically on the tours that you're considering, I can say that Presto was very professional and reliable.

Thanks Sheron, was the group under the 15 people maximum?

I just looked at their site and they don't include anything in their tour of Ostia Antica other than a guide. You have to pay for your own transportation and entry fee. These are 2 euros for transport and 6.50 for entry fee. For 240 euros I would think those two things would be covered. I would just save the money and hire a guide at the site. It's very easy to get to and you'll save hundreds of euros. As for the catacomb visit you have to have a guide and the catacombs provide them. You can find out all the information here: http://www.catacombe.roma.it/en/info.html I couldn't find the roman shuffle tour listed on the Presto website so can't comment on that. All in all, you can hire your own guides at both sites and save a lot of money. Donna

Kerry, yes the Vatican tour was a maximum of 15 people. By the way, Rick Steves has free mp3 tours for different places in Italy & there's one for Ostia Antica in case you're interested. We used his mp3 tours for various places in Rome & found them to be really good. Just a thought if you don't want to go the organized tour route.

I am actually considering using some of R. Steves walking tours as our guide; but would it work with a family of four (including kids)? We'd all have to have an IPOD/MP3. Would this work out well? I'd love to spare the expense of guides/tours, but I want to know what we are looking at. If we can do it cheaply with R. Steves help, I'd be very happy!

Kerry, it might be tough to do the mp3 tours with 4 people. At least two of you would need to have an Ipod or mp3 player. You can buy a device (maybe at Radio Shack) which allows you to plug 2 sets of earphones into an Ipod but 2 sets would be the max. Plus, the 2 people sharing the Ipod would have to walk together and stay together as you'd both be tethered into the same Ipod! This might be a bit of a pain.

We do audio guides all the time and really like them. My teens have their own ipods as do my husband and I. It's really a nice way to see the sites because not everyone is always interested in the same things. If I want to skip parts I can and just wait for the others to finish and they can do the same. Depending on where we are this works out extremely well. We did an audio guide of the Dorsoduro area of Venice and when my husband was listening to something that didn't hold my interest it gave me a few minutes to pop into some shops and look around without bothering him. Another benefit of the kids having their own ipods or other MP3 player is that in the evenings at the hotel they can listen to their own music instead of having to watch CNN, which is usually the only station in English. I have a wonderful picture of my son sitting on the window seat of our hotel one evening with his ear buds in listening to his favorite songs while watching the boats speed along the Grand Canal. He has told me that whenever he hears that song it reminds him of our trip to Venice! Donna

Thanks Sheron & Donna, I think we'll just have to give the audio tours a try and see if it works for us. We do have enough IPODS/MP3 players for each of us, so that is not a problem. I just have to have my husband take the time to download the tours onto all the devices.

Check out some of the tours on pocketvox. They are really great and very easy to follow. Donna