Traveling to Italy with my 16 year old

https://www.ricksteves.com/tours

Review the various RS Italy tours and see which appeals to you.

What is your daughter most interested in?

We did the Venice-Florence-Rome tour as our first RS tour, and it was just about perfect for us in the time and activity level. Three of the world's great cities and no worries about logistics other than getting there and back. Add a few days on either end for relaxation and you'll have a memorable trip. All the tours have about the same amount of people.

But there is no wrong answer.

I second Stan's recommendation of the VFR Tour. We did it last October. We added a day pre-tour in Venice and 2 days post-tour in Rome. Because you're only staying in 3 cities, there's less packing and unpacking and less moving from town to town.

All the RS Italy tours are listed here:
https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/italy
You and your daughter can read the descriptions to decide which appeals.
All tours will include an upper limit of 24 to 28 people.

The VFR tour is probably best suited for what you're looking to do from a trip itinerary standpoint. It hits the Big-3, has all the highlights for each location, and someone else is there to handle all the trip planning, ticketing, reservations and transportation for you; all you have to do is book the flights and meet your guide. Most of these tour groups are about 20-25 people; for some perspective your general run-of-the-mill tour operator will have about 45-55 people in their groups, that's usually the size of most tour buses.

Considering your daughter is 16, unless she's quite mature for her age or, is comfortable with older adults around, she may feel out of place given the average age of most tour groups. Group tours tend to average much older in age, and if you're looking for 'low to moderate' activity level, that generally means you're going to get older and senior adults in the groups, versus an active itinerary that will attract those who are younger or more adventurous.

Considering the RS's VFR is the most popular of their tours, I think this is very suitable for your needs and your daughter will likely not feel out of place. You'd be best watching a handful of RS videos.

Hi Coco, what a wonderful parent you are for planning a special graduation trip to Italy for your daughter. What great memories you will make! I am the parent of a teenager daughter too and recommend you do not go on any Rick Steves tour. As someone else mentioned, Rick Steves tour participants tend to be in their 60’s-70’s mostly. If your daughter is like mine, I doubt very much she would enjoy hanging out with grandparents for her senior trip - it really would be a “senior” trip! I recommend finding another tour company that specializes in family tours or hire a travel agent to help you plan the trip if you don’t feel like you can do it on your own. I’m sorry I don’t have anyone to recommend since we travel independently. I’ll add my daughter is an only child, very mature for her age, enjoys being with adults and would still not enjoy a RS tour!

Everyone before me has given you excellent info and advice. Summertime departures will more often have younger people and the beauty of the Venice-Florence-Rome tour are the 3 nights in each city. Gives you some ‘breathing room’ as you power through what will likely feel a whirlwind trip. Try to plan on arriving 1-day prior to tour start and it feels less rushed if you can add at least 1-night post tour. Keep poking around this website for all the information you’d ever want about RSTs and European travel.

If seeing some of the replies regarding tour groups and the age of the average participants is a concern, you may consider looking into a RS My Way travel option; perhaps contact RS Travel agent and have them discuss with you what options they have. My Way you're not tied to a group most of the day and, the schedule is not quite as structured as a regular RS tour.

While your fears about being overwhelmed with travel planning may be daunting, traveling to Italy is arguably the easiest destination for a first-timer. As long as you know where you'd like to go, and have a rough idea of what you'd like to see, then planning it out and securing reservations and bookings is fairly easy. The train system is extensive and arguably under-priced, plenty of accommodations at all price-points and types, and endless ways to enjoy a destination.

Grab a RS Italy guidebook, read the first Introduction chapter and the section Practicalities. This should get you into a good mindset to start narrowing down what you want to do and if a fully guided trip is the right choice or, you & your daughter can make an adventure of your trip by planning it out together on your own. Trip planning can be enjoyable and by including her in the process, she's not feeling like she's getting dragged along, after all this trip is for her.

Also watch a few of the Travel Talks, travel doesn't have to be a torturous process, just need some perspective
Rick Steves Travel Talks

Welcome to the forum Coco. What a great graduation present you are giving your daughter. I still have fond memories 55 years later of the graduation Europe tour my grandmother and father gave me.

I suggest you look at the Italy tours and let your daughter choose which one interests her. I would not chose the Italy My Way tour as your first RS tour because it sounds like you want activities planned, less stress for you. If your daughter can interact with people of all ages and be engaged in the tour activities, age differences should not be an issue.

Plan a few days on your own pre-tour to acclimate and deal with the good chance of jet lag. Also plan to stay a few days post-tour to relax and savor all you’ve seen and done.

You will have lots of questions as you plan. There are no dumb questions. I started traveling again when I retired; all the how-to’s had changed. I had lots of questions and did lots of research. RS website has lots of information to make traveling easier. The forum is very friendly and helpful.

If you take a Rick Steves tour in June, you will most likely have teenagers on the tour. On my Village Italy tour in 2022, there was one family with their college-aged kids and two sets of grandparents with teenagers, who were on the tour as a graduation present. When I took the Venice, Florence and Rome tour in 2010, there were two sets of families with teenagers. The Southern Italy tour in 2023 did not have any teenagers probably because it started earlier in June, before US schools break for summer vacation.

I am reading this thread with memories of my own college graduation trip. While it was a LONG time ago, I still have some impressions that may be useful for you in planning for this wonderful trip with your daughter.

My main complaint about that long ago trip was overschedling. We were rushed from sight to sight with very little time to explore a bit or even just sit down and relax to absorb what we had seen. As young girls we would have liked a chance to shop a bit or talk to the cute young men at the next table, but there was no chance for us to do that. I'm so grateful that I had that early opportunity to travel, but it caused me to develop a life long aversion to organized group trips.

So, I'm not saying that a group tour is a bad thing. Just make sure that there is some free time built in so that your daughter can do some things that strike her fancy! I looked at the VFR tour recommended by others above, and it does have several free afternoons built in. And on one of those free afternoons, remember that you don't have to join the group dinner if some other activity is more important to your daughter. Think of it this way...you can enjoy a leisurely drink or two on a cafe terrace while she browses the nearby shops or talks to those cute Italian boys across the piazza. You'll profit from the rest, and she can make some memories of her own.

We did this tour about ten years ago and had a great time. It is one of the more strenuous tours, and seemed to us to have very early morning start times. If your teen is not a morning person, this could possibly present an issue, getting up and out of the hotel around 8-8:30am. I believe the reasons were valid- the RS guide was getting us into museums before the crowds, (and did use excellent local guides.) Then after the morning museum visit, we were usually set free to explore on our own for the rest of the day.
We also did the Swiss RS trip, and did not have such early starting times, as we didn't really have museums to explore in Switzerland. We also had a day off on the Swiss trip, which was glorious! Everyone on this trip said that it was the best tour they had ever taken. However, I'm sure many folks report that of their RS tours, which is why the RS tours are so popular !
Safe travels!

If your daughter will still be a minor when you depart the U.S., you may need permission documentation from her father to take her out of the country regardless of your marital status. Hate to throw a wet blanket at you, but sometimes that can be a problem. Better to have it and not need it than the other way around. Perhaps others can offer recent experience.

Thank you so much for the information. I really appreciate you all taking the time to answer my questions. It seems I will have much to present to my daughter. I want her to have an input on the graduation celebration trip.