We had scheduled a winery tour and dinner with the Accidental Tourist company in Florence two months before our departure. But while in Italy, two days before our tour, they cancelled. While they said they tried to get a hold of us, they failed. We were left waiting with an afternoon/evening lost in Florence.

Please be aware if you book with this company, that they are small and any minor changes in their staffing will leave you hanging with nothing to show for it. We did not lose any money. Just some very valuble time in Florence that we could have spent elsewhere. It was a very bad decision on our part to schedule a tour with them.

I am sorry to hear that. I did the winery/pasta making tour in the spring of 2005 and loved it.

Sorry to hear that.

I emailed them in early May about doing a tour in mid-May and never even got a response.

Sorry to hear about your cancellation. My husband and I did a day tour with them in May of this year and it was the highlight of our visit to Florence. We spent a most enjoyable day learning about olive oil and wine production, sampled great olive oil & wines & ended the day at the owners villa cooking home-made pasta. We enjoyed a lovely meal with our hosts & other couples. It's unfortunate you encountered problems & didn't get to experience this.

We just returned from Italy, and we all agree that the highlight of our trip was the day we spent with the Accidental Tourist!!! Our guide, Steve, took us to a villa and a farm and a home all in the hills of Tuscany and it was glorious. There were 9 of us altogether and by the middle of the day it felt like family. We toured the winery and the olive pressing facility, tasted wine and bread, were treated to opera in a glorious old villa. We went to someone's home high in the idyllic hillside and made (from scratch)ravioli and taglietelli, enjoyed a gorgeous meal with chianti, homemade peach sorbet, bruschietta - you name it. Our host was fun and extremely knowledgeable. The homeowner was congenial and marvelous. We would recommend this company to anyone who asked, and would invite Steve and Christiana into our home in the states if they ever come here!

bookmarking

Russell:
I am so sorry to hear that this fell through for you. We just returned from a 2 week vacation in Italy (October 5th-19th)and booked the cooking class/winery tour. It was absolutely amazing and worth every eurocent!
We had a total of 4 people in our tour group (2-4 people didn't show) and had Enso as our host. He did a fantastic job and our hostess at the house where we made pasta was so very nice and accomodating. It was truly one of our favorite experiences on our trip and now we know how to correctly use our pasta maching that's been sitting in our pantry for the past 2 years!
I have to say that I would highly recommend this tour to anyone.

Ciao! Scott

I'm glad to see so many positive responses. My husband and I decided to make the Accidental Tourist Tour our one "splurge" for our trip. We are both really excited, and cannot wait for wine and olive oil!

For those that took it recently, on my confirmation it said to call the day before to reconfirm. Did you do this from your hotel? We will not have cell phone with us.

Thanks!

StLgrrl -

We took the wine tasting/pasta cooking class on our trip last year and, as others have said, it was a highlight of our trip. I have since recommended Accidental Tourist many times. I really believe these negative comments are a fluke as our experience (and many other's) was just the opposite.

We did call to confirm the day before and used the hotel phone to do so.

Have a wonderful trip!

By the way, here is the link to my trip report. Our Accidental Tourist day was Feb 24th:

http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34763995

Thank you so much LCBonti! I really enjoyed your trip report. I'll be copying it for future reference. In a couple of year I am hoping to go to Italy with some friends for a "Hey, we are 30, let's celebrate!" trip. I really hope we can get along as well as your group did.

And, reading your report just made me that more excited for our day with Accidental Tourist! Thank you again!

Bookmarking

Sorry to hear about that experience. I hope you at least went out for a glass of wine that evening.

You said you did not lose any money - do you pay at the time of the tour or did they reimburse you?

kwren -

Their policy is that you pay when the tour is over - nothing before, not even a deposit.

The overall cost of the tour is very reasonable and, IMO, worth much more, especially in comparison with other tours we took.

They are sometimes slow to respond to emails. Perhaps that is why vivi did not receive a timely response before her trip.

I'm sorry for the negative experiences posted here because everyone I dealt with was delightful and professional.

Hi - I'm resurrecting this thread about Accidental tourist because I have emailed them twice to make reservations and have not heard back. First email was sent 2 1/2 weeks ago. Has anyone dealt with them recently? Did you make arrangements by email or by phone (I haven't tried phoning them yet)? Thanks for any feedback.

butnot -

I emailed them last year about doing the wine tour/cooking class this March. I received an email back the same week.

Did you fill out the form, or just send an email? I think I filled out the form requesting what date/tour I wanted.

HTH!

I emailed this week with a few questions about the tour and received an email back the next day with all questions answered. Keep trying. Maybe they didn't get your email.

I'm booking the tour now, having a day backup plan incase they cancel at the last moment.

It sounds wonderful, so I figure it's worth a try.

Question to ones that have used them: Is it cash only and did you tip at the end of the day?

It is cash only. They say they will stop at an ATM for you, but I would be prepared.

Tipping is entirely up to you. We felt the entire experience was so magical (and a value for the price) that we did tip both the gentleman in charge of most of our tour and the woman at whose house we made pasta. She did the cooking for our lunch and was delightful.

Posted too soon . . .

Please report back on your experience. I'm sure you will have a wonderful time!

After initially having trouble contacting them, they sent an apologetic email for not responding, and I have booked the cooking day for our April trip. I am really looking forward to this. Re canceling, they said that as long as they have 2 people, they will run a tour, so I guess it would only be a staffing disaster that would cause a cancellation for us.