RS My Way tours

This is an "un-guided" tour — giving you the freedom (and responsibility) to manage your daily sightseeing schedule and meals

A Rick Steves tour manager will coordinate the group's transportation and hotels and provide advice for sightseeing, meals, etc.
https://www.ricksteves.com/tours/italy/my-way-italy

No idea which tour you are contemplating, but they all have the same basic structure.

On the My Way France tour, days 4 and 8 offer optional transportation to and from a different site. This was one we we are looking at. You need to read each day’s itinerary.

We did Italy My Way last year. We preferred to the standard tour as we were able to book our own excursions doing things that were more of interest to us. There were no optional excursions offered thru the tour. We did a couple of food tours that I haven’t seen offered on a standard tour. Also booked some of the standards (e.g. David in Florence, Vatican in Rome) ourselves. Really enjoyed this setup and the hotels, transportation and tour mates were all great. It was nice to have a Rick Steves “guide” along all the way to offer assistance and opinions when needed and herd us along.

I’m looking at My Way France too. Last regular RS was a bit too “cultural” for my hubby. Museums, castles, palaces etc. so thought this route might appeal to him more. We’ll see. Prefer to choose our restaurants as well so this would give us more options for that.

We did the RS My Way France tour last fall. There was an optional tour to a castle, optional in the sense that the tour provided transportation along with the guide, but you were responsible for purchasing the tickets once there. I don't recall any other optional excursions.