Strikes

Hi cynbeth,
More info would be helpful please?
What day are you flying home, and from which airport? Have you booked a hotel in your city of departure for the night before your flight?

Regarding hoho buses, they are not part of public transport systems - they are tourist sightseeing buses with prices to match - so they'd still run. But they are not recommended for efficient sightseeing in Rome, and they don't have them in Venice, of course. Florence? I can't imagine needing them for that city as it's reasonably compact, has a lot of pedestrian areas, and is best explored on foot if not using local buses or taxis. Hohos aren't really designed to be stand-ins for public transit. Transit strikes don't necessarily affect ALL forms of public transit either.

What cities are you planning to visit, and what are you thinking you need the hohos or public transit for?

Kathy- Thanks for responding. It would not let me quote your post so will try to answer your questions as best I can. We are hopefully flying from Rome back to the US on 7/15. We will barring anything unexpected be on a cruise that leaves out of Barcelona and are flying in a few days early to spend some time there and it ends at Civi port. After the cruise we are spending some time in Venice and Rome and that Rome hotel is where we will be leaving from to get to the airport. The HoHo bus question is actually for Monaco and Genoa which are ports during the cruise we are doing on our own not going on a ship excursion and figured I would ask in case I find there might be strikes the days we visit them. Thanks!

Would love advice for this, thanks!

I can tell you about our experience with strikes on our trip in late May-June4th. On our first day in Florence we had planned to take a local train to Lucca, spend as much time as we wanted and come back to Florence same day. Train strike was scheduled for that day so they did have limited trains in the early morning and evening so that workers could get to work and back but nothing else. We were disappointed but just spent the day exploring Florence and it was fine.

The next strike was a general nation-wide airport strike on June 4th-the day we were scheduled to fly home from Rome. We heard rumors of this in advance but knew it could possibly be cancelled at the last minute so we waited to hear from United about any problems. We checked with our travel insurance to see what they thought we should do and they said just wait and see, that we did have "trip interuption/ cancellation" that would cover up to 125%. 4 days before our return flight United emailed us stating that this strike was occuring and that long delays and cancellations were possible. They said that we could change our flight to a day early or 1 day later without any penalty. We were definitely nervous about possibly sleeping in the airport, days of delays, crowded and overbooked flights, airport hotels not having availability,etc. so we chose to change our flight to a day early. It was very sad for us to leave Sorrento early, pay a $100 cancellation fee, lose ferry tour fees, $150. in train tickets. Then we had to change our stay at the Hilton Airport to an day earlier. We were charged more for our "new" room because it was now more expensive.

After a huge stress of trying to change multiple reservations/tickets while on a train to Sorrento, with minimal cell reception we actually made it home a day early. However, I did learn that our original flight made it out on time and without any problems. So there we are now. Spent many hours of vacation time trying to navigate all of these changes. We have about $700 of added expenses which trip insurance probably won't pay since our flight was not actually cancelled. You can take your chances and hope that everything works out or try to be proactive and stay an extra day so you don't have to worry. I just say don't try to make all these changes while you are actually traveling-definitely difficult and not worth it!

Thank you!