Private Tour Guides Rome geared towards Kids

We booked a tour of Florence through One Step Closer, which we found on the Ciao Bambino website (http://www.ciaobambino.com/kid-friendly-guides.asp). The company is recommended there for the fact that it specializes in working with families. We have four children (ages 12, 9, 6, 1) and are travelling with another family, so there are ten in our group. We thought the price of 300 euro (half-day) for the group was very reasonable for a private tour. We also booked an "experience" for the afternoon (private behind the scenes tour of a gelato shop, including sampling the various gelato flavors). We thought about booking a Rome tour, too, but ultimately decided against it. One Step Closer does offer Vatican tours and other tours in/around Rome. Antonella Grossi, one of the owners, has been very patient and helpful as we went back and forth over tour possibilities and she even negotiated a lower rate for the younger children taking the gelato shop tour. We have not left for Italy yet...just 10 more days! I can post again after we return to let you know how things worked out with One Step Closer. Good luck!

Lisa, my kids loved Castel St. Angelo, and so did we. Go early in the morning and you have the place practically to yourself. It is tranquil and lovely with beautiful views of Rome. The only tour we did was the underground Colosseum tour - and my kids were bored. They prefer to just walk around themselves. We all loved walking around at night to all the fabulous piazza's (Navona, Fiori, Pantheon, Trevi, Spanish Steps) and Trastevere was lovely at night. My kids were 9 and 14 went we went this past July. We did tour lots of the ruins (catacombs, Forum, Palatine Hill, Circus Maximus) and even went to see the Boca de Verita for a fun photo. We LOVED Rome! We were there for eight days and had plenty to do.

Hi Lisa, I do travel consulting with families planning trips abroad and at the moment I am in Florence with my 7 year old and my mother and aunt. We did not book any tours but have used Rick Steves' 2011 Italy guide book to great success. Keeping in mind that overscheduling,waiting in lines and being late for meals spells doom for travel with chiildren, we followed Rick's advice on "David day". Although we had planned to visit Michaelangelo's David sculpture early in the day, there was a line a block long to get in and the sun was beating down (yes, in October!). Rick suggests that lines are short after 4p so we walked down the street and ate lunch in a fabulously intimate yet bustling spot recommended in Rick's book located at 70 via degli Alfani. We ate for 5euros each, had an interesting trip to the bathroom in the locked stairwell next door where the toilet and sink are in a storage closet through a hobbit-sized door. Great fun for my daughter. To fill some time between lunch and the 4-6:30p visit to see David, we stopped to take a look at beautiful mosaics made of semiprecious stones just down the street at 78 via degli Alfani at the Opificio Delle Pietre Dure museum and also visited the quaint, hands-on Leonardo Da Vinci museum nearby.
Melissa