HI Friends -
I am new to the forum but I have been watching Rick Steve's for years!
My boyfriend and I are going to Italy (for the first time) - it has been years in the making because the trip is for fun and for my family tree (i am learning Italian).
My question is there a tour that we can take of the Vatican? Which tour company would you recommend?
Thanks!
Jackie and Rob!
this one has many options one that fits your range
https://www.walksofitaly.com/vatican-tours?gclid=Cj0KCQiAh_DTBRCTARIsABlT9Mai5N75rpbim2vlz6zwSJclbhwpbnCGY7XmPlYTfv74dZ_S--Udt2oaAn70EALw_wcB
Welcome to the gang, Jackie and Rob!
You've been provided one very popular guide service among the posters who've used them but if you're traveling on a tight budget, the Vatican offers their own less-expensive options.
The official website is here:
http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en.html/
Do be aware that the 'Vatican' includes areas which are not open to tourists, and there is no single tour which includes ALL of the areas which are. Here's what they have:
A very popular tour is the combo of the museums and St Peter's:
http://www.museivaticani.va/content/museivaticani/en/visita-i-musei/scegli-la-visita/musei-e-collezioni/musei-vaticani-e-basilica-di-san-pietro/visita-guidata-musei-e-basilica-s--pietro-per-singoli-e-gruppi-.html
This is nice as, while the basilica is free, a tour allows you DIRECT entrance into the church from the museums and so eliminates a long walk from the museums to St Pete's and standing in that 2nd security queue. After your tour is over, you're free to spend as much time in the basilica as you wish. Pretty much ALL tours, whether the Vatican's, Walks of Italy or other company's, which include the museums and St Peter's operate this way.
Also, the Vatican offers an early-entrance breakfast option which gets you inside before the general public. This one is also nice because, just as with Walks of Italy's "Pristine Sistine", you can get a look at the Sistine Chapel in relative sanity before it gets utterly mobbed.
This is great thank you so much!
i am carefully reading all the tours that you guys have been throwing our way -
This is incredible - this is just making us more excited.....
Please keep the responses coming -
J and R
Shoot, I get excited over OTHER peoples' Italy trips!
A lil' tip as you post more questions? Include stuff like how long you're going, how long you're staying in each place, and at what time of year, if you remember to? Depending on what it is you want to know, details like that can make a difference in how people might respond.
Great idea Kathy - thank you
So Rob and I are planning on going the last week of August into the first week into Sept 2018. Right now we are trying to go for 12-14 days!
We want to visit, Venice (only 1 night), Rome, Florence, Chinque Terra and then we will make our way down to Bari and Campobasso for those two last towns are for my family tree. My great-grandparents are from Bari and Campobasso. Every city we are visiting we are planning on staying in.
We want to visit, Venice (only 1 night), Rome, Florence, Chinque Terra
and then we will make our way down to Bari and Campobasso.
That is a lot of moves and a lot of ground to cover in 12 days or even 14. Consider that you're going to lose about a 1/2 a day to the transfer process every time you make a move? With 5 moves, that's 2.5 days of your total that you'll spend packing/unpacking, checking in/out, getting to train stations, sitting on trains, getting to your new accommodation...
It's also more accurate to count the number of nights you'll have on the ground in Italy so that your flight days aren't in there. Arrival day is only a partial and can be a jet-lagged fog. 2 nights is only one FULL day of sightseeing.
Where are you looking at flying in and out of?
If all you have for Venice is one night, I would skip it, especially because Venice is a little distance from all the other places you name (as in the Cinque Terre area). Florence, Rome, Bari, and Campobasso would probably be plenty for a 12-14 day trip.
We haven't worked that out just yet - the dates we are officially going -
But once we have our dates i wanted to book the hotel, tour tickets and the flight in one day.....
i am hoping to do this in March - make the final arrangements.
I really want to take good tours and at this point - i am not worried money for the tour - because this is a "once and a lifetime trip" - i have been saving up hotel points and flight points for years!
so any tips for this trip i am welcoming...I would love to go 14-16 days but Rob may not be able to - he owns his own business and 12 -14 days is stretching it......maybe all your comments will convince him.
We were thinking of flying into Venice - then making our way down Italy to Bari and maybe fly out of Bari?
I don't like flying so I large airports and high volume airports if you know what i mean. Originally we were going to fly in/out Rome, but i think we want to do things on the opposite of the country we will waste time traveling.....so that is how i came up with Venice and bari......
I would love to go 14-16 days but Rob may not be able to - he owns his
own business
I hear ya. It's difficult to stretch the vacation days when you're working! But consider this? I'm guessing you are both reasonably young, right? It might take the pressure off to look at this as not your ONLY trip to Italy. What if you concentrated on the South this time and did a future trip which covered more of the North? Say you started in Rome and did something like Naples/Pompeii, Amalfi Coast (get your sea fix), Campobasso and Bari? Next trip you'd, say, do Venice, Florence, CT, Rome + some day trips in Tuscany out of Florence? I don't want to throw a wrench in your years of planning but it would also be no fun to be exhausted and harried, trying to cram too much into too little, by the time you hit Rome? It's hard to enjoy what you're looking at when you're hot (and it will be hot in August/early Sept.) and tired. You're also going to miss a lot in some great places with very, very limited time.
The problems with really tight itineraries is that the single day you may have planned to City X may be the one the museums you want to see are closed, it pours rain, you're hit with a case of travelers' tummy, etc. Transport strikes are not frequent but can happen as well. Having more time to stay put here and there provides some flexibility to work around potential snags/weather+ plus allows for some space to just kick back a little, explore without an agenda, or just catch your breath with a beverage and some fun people-watching.
The above are just loose suggestions but you get the idea?
Thanks Kathy for the suggestions -
We are open to options, that is why I thought to reach out on this forum - it started as tours but it is moving in a good direction about the trip in general. This is good - thank you
Yes, forum discussions can take some interesting turns! Wasn't my intention to detour off the tour question but your additional information spurred a few well-intentioned thoughts about the overall plan. Don't want you two to be too pooped halfway into it to have fun!
Kathy's advice is excellent. Until you go there, you cannot fully understand just how dense Italy is. It's tiring, in a good way. But there's a lot to take in everywhere, and rushing through seeing lots of places means you don't enjoy them at all.
I like her idea of seeing either the north or the south, but not both, on your first trip. My first trip to Italy (of seven, and counting) was to Milan, Venice, and Florence, with day trips to Siena, Lucca, and Pisa. Many were scandalized - "how can you go to Italy and not see Rome?" But I wasn't interested in Rome at the time. However, the first trip kindled that interest, and I made it the focus of my second Italy trip. Now Rome is one of my favorite places, but who knows how I'd feel if I only went there out of obligation?
No matter what else you do, do NOT just have one, jet lagged, arrival night in Venice. Either spend more time there, or save it for another trip.
As for the airports, the problem with small ones is that (coming from the US) you can only reach them by changing in larger ones. I personally find changing in large airports harder than arriving or departing, but of course it does depend on the airport and not everyone agrees on this.
I don't know where in the US you're departing from. Venice has a very few nonstop flights at certain times of the year (Newark, Philadelphia, Chicago, JFK, Atlanta). Rome and Milan get nonstops year-round, but even from many large cities, you will have to change. If you do have to change to get to Italy, most prefer, if at all possible, to change in Europe. This is not only faster overall, but gives you more options. From, say, San Francisco to Venice: if you go via Newark, there's only one flight from Newark to Venice a day. Miss that for any reason, and you have to wait a whole day. But if you go via Frankfurt, there will be several Frankfurt to Venice flights. As long as you're flying all on one ticket the whole way, the airline will put you on the next available flight at no charge.
If you say where you're flying from, others can advise you on the best options; it really is different for each origin city.
Venice airport has a lot of taxes which add a lot to the cost of your single day there. I agree with Kathy on the two trips, North/south idea. (Be sure to throw a coin, right hand over left shoulder, into the Trevi Fountain to guarantee your return! It worked for me...I’m headed back for my 3rd visit this fall.)
But back to the Vatican tours...I highly recommend the Pristine Sistine tour with Walks of Italy! It starts an hour or more before the museums open, and they make a beeline for the Sistine Chapel. At that time there are limited numbers of people, and you can actually take your time and see the glorious ceiling, the beautiful floor and the wall murals. The later tours have so many people you can barely move, and you can’t really enjoy the experience. You get back to the museums before they are open, so you really beat the crowd. St. Peter’s is also on the tour. Keep in mind that the basilica is free, and if you go back in the early evening you can see it without the throngs.
The Walks of Italy tours are terrific! They have them in various cities and we've taken several. Always a small group and their guides are really wonderful!
