Hello!
Thanks to everyone in this forum, we are leaving for Spain and Italy on May 10th.

We would like to request your help in planning our visit to Florence and Rome. We understand from this Forum that it is better to book for guided / private tours for the Vatican museums and Ancient Rome, as well as for the Uffizi.

Could you please help answer the following questions:
a) We found that Vatican museum guided tours are offered by i) the Vatican itself and ii) through private providers such as througheternity. Would you recommend one over the other?

b)The Vatican guided tours offered by private providers tend to have about 15 people and cost about 40 Euro, while the 'private private' tours for the two of us cost about 250 Euro. We obviously want to have a good experience at the museums and enjoy them, but are not clear if it makes sense to pay for the private 2 person tour. What are the pros / cons of the guided vs private tour at the Vatican museums, and is it worth taking the 'private private' tour?

c) Is there a recorded English 'audio guide' that will help us appreciate the museums on our own and at our own pace? We love hearing commentary on the works of art we are looking at, and have found that we enjoy the museums a lot more as a result. How does such a guide in English (if it exists) compare to having a guided / private tour in the Vatican Museums?

d) Can we walk around the sights of Ancient Rome on our own, or would you recommend signing onto a guided tour for this too?

e) Is there an English recorded 'audio guide' to the Uffizi? If not, would you recommend a guide?

Thank you for your inputs.

TTT
Just topping...please help on deciding if we need to book for any guided/private tours...

Thanks!!

We head to Barcelona June 10 and end our trip in Rome after Florence and Naples. We've been told to book our own private tours but have not gotten beyond that yet. I'll be waiting to see if you get any good suggestions!

We booked a "shared tour" of the Vatican museums on Saturday 5/26 through www.selectitaly.com. They will only do the tour if 2 more people sign up. So someone, please join us! I think it's $127 per person, and you get to enter before the crowds at 8am or something like that.

In my opinion, having a guide for the sights of ancient Rome is far more important than having one in the Vatican museums where the exhibits are self-explanatory. We were very pleased with Francesca Caruso for the Palatine and Forum; she will guide you anyplace in the city and speaks perfect English. Her prices are more reasonable than other guides we considered.

We were in Rome,Florence and Venice this past October. We decided that we did not want to be part of a large tour group.We used Context Travel (www.contexttravel.com)The maximum number of people on a tour is ( 6 ) six. They also have private tours.The ( 4 ) four tours that we took with Context were fabulous. We will definitely use them again when we return to Italy in 2008. Three of the four tour guides had PHD'S and the fourth tour guide was working on his PHD.

These days if you have an mp3 player or an iPod you can download audio tours that you can listen to at your own pace. Some of them are really great.

I use www.tourdio.com to find them, and for Rome, if you go to:

http://www.tourdio.com/continents/eu.../url_rome.html

then you should find lots of tours listed there.

Request a guided tour of the Vatican direct from the Vatican itself: http://mv.vatican.va/3_EN/pages/z-In...zi_Visite.html. This will allow you to skip the lines. The only problem with this is that you MUST provide a fax number in Rome where they can fax you a day or two before the tour. You will not find out if you have the tour until then. Their are audio guides available for rental in the following languages: Italian, English, French, German, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. The rental is 6e.

You can easily find a guide at the Ancient sights in Rome - they will approach you!