Hi There,
Is it necessary to have a private tour of Florence and Rome? If so does any have a good recommendations of a non expensive good tour group to sign up with?
Has anyone also taken any cooking classes in either city? Do you have one to recommend?
I believe that most on this forum will say that it is NOT necessary to have private tours of Florence or Rome. Rick's books detail walks which we have used and found them to be perfectly satisfactory !
That said, there are sites where you may want more in depth information. We used Walks of Italy for the Vatican Museum and loved this level of knowledge that we did not quite get from our RS download the first time.
Our friends went to Rome for their first visit and used Alessio Vicari for two days - they raved about him. He is on facebook.
For cooking in Florence, look at
florencetown.com
cookeatitalian.com
eatingitalyfoodtours.com
myitalianfriends.com
We just got back from our 3 week Italy tour and did both a cooking class and a food tour in Rome. Both were fantastic!
The cooking class started around 10 am and didn't end till around 4pm. We all participated and tried our hand at all the dishes. We had squash blooms stuffed with prosciutto and cheese, there were 2 different sauces we made, one for the pasta and one for the meatballs. The dessert was tiramisu. So good and so much fun we got to meet some great people. The chef, Andreas Consoli was wonderful he email us the recipes once we got home. The school was called Cooking Classes in Rome http://www.cookingclassesinrome.com/
Our food tour was done by Eating Italy called Taste of Testaccio Food Tour. We wanted to do an area that was not visited by so many tourists. A little research told me this was the place and we were not disappointed. It was withing walking distance but we took a cab for less than 10 euros. We ate so much and learned a little history at the same time. Highly recommend.
Gloria
We did 2 fantastic tours out of Florence with WALKABOUT FLORENCE. We did their BEST OF TUSCANY and their CHIANTI WINE & FOOD SAFARI - you can read about them on their website & on TripAdvisor - if you decide to book with WALKABOUT FLORENCE, do it directly on their website, not through TripAdvisor which uses a 3rd party booking company. Both tours were amazing and if you have time for 2, I highly recommend them both, but if you can only do one, go with THE BEST OF TUSCANY.
We also took a great cooking class in Florence while we were on the RickSteves Tour - I'll have to look it up.
In Rome, we went on 2 different EATING ITALY food tours that went to different neighborhoods - both lots of fun.
Our favorite were the WALKABOUT FLORENCE tours -
