RS Best of Veince,Florence,Rome Tips to fill our free time

For Venice, you could take a vaporetto over to San Giorgio Maggiore - see the Palladio-designed church, which often has contemporary art on display, and enjoy the views, both at sea level and from the top of the bell tower.

In Florence Find the Ponte Trinia bridge. Best pics of the Ponte Vecchio in the late afternoon. The jewlers bridge turns "Golden"

If you like gardens, the Bardini
Gardens is much more personal than the Boboli.

Or pack a small picnic and head to Michangelo up on the hill.

For a brilliant evening, head to one of the rooftop bars for great views over Florence.

Take the vaporetto to the island of Murano. It feels like Venice, but different.

Try to check out the Doge's palace in Venice. If you like sculptures, I recommend the Bargello in Florence. Donatello's David is there. I'd highly recommend the Borghese Gallery in Rome. You need a reservation, but it's easy to do on their website. I did that in the free afternoon after visiting the Vatican. Have fun on this tour! I loved it last year.

Our tour guide gave us suggestions and I trust yours will do the same.

Venice - we simply walked and filled our free time based on what interested us

Florence - climb the Duomo...worth it in our opinion but you need to prebook online at least a week before; we did and were fine but our guide tried to arrange for some tour members and it was sold out for the next few days

Florence - climb hill to see sunset and enjoy statue of David

Rome - walk to otherside of river for non touristy experience

Rome - walk up spanish steps and go behind them...streets are quieter and much less touristy...nice walk overall

Above are our personal preferences

Enjoy!

We took the VFR tour in June of this year and had a magical time! We had planned many activities for our free time, but we learned there wasn't as much free time as we had thought there would be due to schedule changes or late group dinners. We were thankful we had arrived in Venice before the tour began and wished that we had extended our stay in Rome when the tour ended.
Happy safe travels!

One thing I've found very useful in planning for an RS tour is to look at the alumni scrapbooks for the tour for the last several years. Most of them include a lot of general travel tips, tips for the tour, and details of what they did in their free time, often including restaurant recommendations. Some of them even include links to contact the author. I've done that and found them as generous as people on the forum in sharing their experiences and practical information.

Art lovers should visit the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice.

This is one reason that they would like you to bring the appropriate guidebook with you on the tour. They used to send you one as part of the tour package, but we saw very few people bringing them on the tours, causing some frustration for the tour leader.