Would like to know if anyone has had experience with either of these tour companies to Italy. Do they use good hotels, restaurants, decent transportation ?? Travelling out of Boston in October.

I'm an independent traveller when it comes to Italy. However if I were to use services of an escorted tour, I'd probably use Perillo Tours or Donna Franca. You may want to pull up a thread of several months back &quot;Rome-Venice-Florence Tour Info needed&quot; in which you'll find a few firsthand accounts re: tours. URL = http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessages.jsp?fid=2&amp;tid=1485759&amp;numrespon ses=17&amp;start=0&amp;searchText=collette<BR><BR> FYI, October is a great time to go to Italy. I've visited there twice during that time of year.

Thanks to Tess for your reply.

I took a Collette tour to Ireland last May. It was wonderful. Our hotels were very nice and usually within walking distance of the town we were in. The only exception was in Dublin but the hotel was so lovely I didn't care. And they arranged for our transportation into the main shopping/musuem/Trinity College area on our free day. I'd never taken a tour before but agreed to go with a friend. I was wary because I'm usually an independent traveler but it was nice not to have to worry about things except how much money I was spending. I also liked the fact that my friend and I were the youngest on the tour and everybody kept calling us &quot;the kids&quot;. Considering I'll never see 40 again that was great! And even though it was mostly senior citizens, we had a great time and I've kept in touch with several of them since the trip.

Sharon, thanks for your reply re: Collete Tours. Guess we will just &quot;go for it&quot;