Hi,

I'm trying to book the Vatican Museum tours by fax, but for security purposes they do not reply immediately and require a fax in Rome to forward the confirmations.

However, the B&B I'm interested in does not have a fax number.

Is there anyway around it? I could ask someone at home to keep checking my fax but how am I to have a physical printout of the confirmation or will a reference number read over the phone suffice?

Thanks!

love kimmy x

Sorry, I am not much help as I am in the same fix. I have actually faxed the Vatican twice, and the second time included my email address and the email address on the cruise ship I will be on. We leave very early this Thursday morning and there is no one here able and willing to get the fax after we leave. I requested a tour (several weeks ago)for next Tuesday, May 22 at 2 pm. I have read that others have had this same problem and have called the Vatican Tours office (06 69 88 46 76) when they got to Rome to see if their name is on the list and explained their dilemma. I have read about two different parties that were able to tour even though they did not have the actual paper because their names were on the list for that day. Don't know if that always works, though. Also how do we really know if the fax was actually received? I got an OK message on my fax machine print out after I sent them...but I am sure that is not enough proof... Oh well.....Quella è vita!

A thought for the future is to use one of the internet fax services as I do and the fax is received as an e mail message with the fax as an attachment. Then you can access it whenever you get your emails and/or save it in the mailbox for future reference.

Actually, i found a free one that sends faxes to Rome from Germany. The only problem I had was in actually sending the fax through them because all the instructions were in German. I translated them the best I could on line, but the fax/email thing still did not go through. I will try again tonight.

Update: The Vatican Tours office NEVER did fax me or email a response for either of the requests I sent by fax. (I did get the fax phone bill, though. OUCH!) When we got to the Vatican we were five minted too late to check the list so I will never know if our name was on it or not. We got to the Vatican Tours office at exactly two oclock and all the tours for that day showed SOLD OUT and the office was closed. As the line was not too long we just did the Vatican Museum and the Sistene Chapel on our own. Would have liked to take the guided tour, but the "fax method" just did not work for us. Checked our email on our cruise ship (nothing), plus there was no fax here at home upon our return. Don't know what went wrong. The call was definitely "completed" but alas, no response from Vatican Tours!