First-time RS tour report… We took a mid September RS tour Venice/Florence/Rome (9/19th – 28th) and started our planning with a Community College Italian class in April and May, just to learn some basics. For the tour, my wife listed her priorities; I listed mine. Then we scoured the RS tour plan for which of those items are on the tour and which were not. Then decided if we had enough "free time" in each city to do the items on the priority list and if we could do anything else. We actually got them all in, but it was a busy trip. I spent a lot of time with Google Maps and “the little guy” walking maps of Agnone, Venice, Florence and Rome, just to get familiar with each city. My wife surprised me with a pre-planned two week language school just prior to the RS tour, so a 10 day vacation turned into all month.
The language school in Agnone (9/3rd to 17th), Italy (Molise province) really gave us a big boost on the language. Great fun doing that, but Agnone was chilly and our introduction to Italian bathrooms and the 'no actual breakfast' routine were an eye opener. We also were able to keep up on our walking "a lot" while in Agnone as the town was spread out along the top of a mountain ridge. Very hilly and the cobblestone streets were a real issue for me. We averaged more than 4 miles a day while in school.
After the two weeks in Agnone, we had two days in Rome(9/17th & 18th ). The first afternoon (Saturday) we rested a bit because on Sunday we were scheduled to take a local train down to Ostia Antica, the ancient Rome harbor. The ride down was a mess, as we had to transfer from the Rome Metro system to what I’ll call a local train to Ostia. We were in the very front car of the Metro, which offloaded way-y-y-y down the platform from where the RS tour book said we would find the ‘easy’ way to get to the local train, so we ended up exiting the Metro station and going off in the wrong direction. We had to turn back and pay another Metro fee to get BACK into the station and get over to the local train station. Pretty confusing. But we got to Ostia and spent a good 3-4 hours touring the ruins of this ancient Roman port. Difficult walking on the pathways; many, many bumpy stones and poorly spaced rocks to walk on. I ended up walking in the dirt to one side of the pathway, but the history and museum were very interesting. We trained/Metro-ed back to our hotel and got packed up and rested, as we had a bullet train to catch on Monday morning.
Bulleted to Venice on 9/19th – 3.2 hours. During the 3 days in Venice, with our pre-planning, we got Café Florian (whoa!!), Harry's American Bar (of course), a daytime gondola ride with the group and vocalist and accordianist and a night at the opera (Italian, of course!). There also was shopping in Venice, the tour stops (back street walk, lagoon tour, St. Mark's Basilica and piazza, Doge's Palace, Bridge of Sighs), lunches and dinners with the group, and several on our own. The hotel, Pensione Guerrato, was wonderful; the stairs were killer!
We did so much in Venice that my wife had to rest a bit while in Florence. She missed out on the back streets walk, the David, the Duomo and the Bapistry (the 3-d brass doors were just astounding in the detail work), but she has been to Florence before. We stayed at Hotel Silla in the Oltrarno and it was wonderful. The elevator was a blessing. We spent part of our Saturday free time in a fresco painting class we arranged during our pre-planning stage. We also met up with a Londonite who took us to the fresco studio and gave us her 'around the town' tour as we were walking to lunch and the studio. Pretty cool, as she covered a number of items that were NOT on the RS walk about town tour. I went on the Academia tour with the group, and my wife joined us on Saturday morning to do the Uffizzi Museum - both were just wonderful.
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OP
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Part 2 - The Duomo museum was closed when I tried to see it, but I managed to change that visit into going back across the river and get up to the Piazza Michaelangelo for that epic picture of Florence that you see everywhere. Just beautiful. We found two very nice, quiet non-tourist restaurants to have dinner on our own. Because we could read a bit of Italian, and were comfortable stumbling along with what we could say, we had fun striking out on our own.
Moving from tour city to city was by bus – very comfortable – no assigned seating. Our tour guide, Graeme, began each bus ride with historic background of the up-coming city, highlights that would be covered, other things to do in the free time and miscellaneous items. I must say that our driver was simply outstanding. We had no sooner left Florence for Rome when some other driver in front of the bus pulled a silly stunt and crashed, but most of us missed what happened as the driver had to suddenly swerve and slam on the brakes. We got jostled around a bit, but the driver did not hit the mess in front of him and other traffic also came to a stop safely. We all applauded!!
On the way to Rome, we stopped at a winery in Orvieto for a “wine experience”, not a tasting. We spent about two hours touring the winery, sipping five different types of wines all produced at the winery, eating the cheeses and meats they recommended to go with their wines. Very tasty. Some tour members purchased bottles of wine and I purchased a single bottle of the ‘mellow’ red and a t-shirt as well. We planned on drinking it at the hotel in Rome.
In Rome, my wife had her free time planned out, including a day long Vespa tour of Rome and the country-side on Monday. The group did a back streets walk on Sunday evening, ending up at a nice family restaurant for a group dinner. Monday was the day the tour was going to the Sistine Chapel and the Vatican museums, which wife had already seen. So I went with the tour group and she slept in and went on her Vespa ride. I can only say that the Sistine Chapel was on my priority list and I spent almost 20 minutes sitting in that beautiful chapel just soaking it all in (besides, I needed to sit for a bit.) Getting there was the pits, as we had to go through the Vatican museums first and after the third 300 foot long hallway of paintings, I was ready to sit down and relax. But after the Chapel, we got into St. Peter’s (as a group) real fast. Gads, what a church! Saw “the Pieta” by Michaelangelo...just beautiful. Stood on the front steps looking out at the piazza in front and realized that the whole place was getting set up with more than 10,000 chairs, as the Pope was having a church ‘audience’ event the next day. Wow – just breath-taking to imagine the crowd that would be there the next day…and glad that I would not be. Monday afternoon, we went to Piazza Navona, the Pantheon (rats, it closed just as we got there…) and Trevi Fountain. We could not get very close to the fountain because of the crowd. Wall to wall people jammed in this small piazza in front of the fountain. Monday evening my wife described her Vespa adventure (very scary in Rome traffic) as we all sipped the wines from the winery at the Hotel San Carlo terrace. We did the Colosseum, the Roman Forum ruins (hot and muggy) and the Pallatine Hills on Tuesday morning. We left the group at lunch and found a nice restaurant just off Via Cavour on the way back to the hotel. A great lunch with wine and lasagna! Delicious and priced reasonably. We rested that afternoon and got all packed up for the flight home the next morning. Our tour ended on the Spanish Steps Tuesday evening with the whole group taking pictures and having a wonderful time.
We used British Air for both flights to and from Italy and I can’t say enough good things about them. Service was just wonderful. Food was very nice. Good beverages as well.
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Cincinnati
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We just returned from a 10 day trip to Rome and Positano. Thanks to Rick Steves and other guides we had a great trip. We traveled just the two of us, so we made a lot of our own plans. We did book two tours for Rome and Florence (walks of Italy and Viator). Both were excellent guides and well worth the money. But Rick was great, we added his apps to our phone and used him exclusively at the Forum and Colosseum. We got up very early and arrived there before 830. We bought our tickets through the official site and then walked through the venues listing to Rick. It was really a perfect way to do this. For Florence we booked through Viator and then listed to Rick's guide as further background at both David gallery and Uffizi. Back in Rome we booked Walks of Italy for the Vatican (recommend an early, early tour time) and, again, had a wonderful guide but listened to Rick afterwards for additional background. Overall between Rick's app and his Rome 2017 book and map, we were thrilled and will definitely use this method for a future trip. This was our first trip overseas, and thanks to Rick - we had absolutely no hiccups!!