Hop on, Hop off bus in Rome
 

I am interested in learning which company travelers used and whether they liked the service. I see several tour bus sites when I google: "hop on, hop off bus Rome" Is rome-tours.net the best or the most popular? I used a similar service in Barcelona and thought it was a great way to get to orient myself to the city. Plus I remember things much better when I hear them (as opposed to reading something in a guide book!) Any advice would be appreciated.

I did the Red Bus Hop on/Hop off in Rome last year, and really loved it - I enjoyed the headphone info and you don't have to listen if you don't want to because the tickets good for 24 hours if you want to just scope out the whole thing, then go back to your favorite spots.

We decided to chase down the bus on the spur of the moment (but look for the tall red round signs on the street that mark the stops. You can actually just get all that online ahead of time).
We got on late in the afternoon so we had some daylight going into early evening which was nice to see the lights come on. We also did it in Florence and found it was a nice way to see the most/best stuff.

Not all HOHO buses run the same itinerary, so you do need to make sure that you review their routes. We inadvertently selected the Christian tour, which is fine if your interest lies in historic Roman Catholic churches. However, because this tour's emphasis was on churches, the stops weren't always the best ones if you wanted to see some of the historic Roman sites.

The Rome tourist office runs two HOHO buses, the #110 (red) which goes to the main sites in the central historic district and to the Vatican and the archeobus which goes to some of the same sites then out the Appian Way and the aqueducts.
We took the archeobus and had a good experience but other posters have been less satisfied especially when they tried to use the bus at especially busy times of year

There are some "integrated passes" combining the two HOHO routes and public transit options
www.trambusopen.com/index.cfm?id=home

Thank you so much for the info. It's a great help.

In September we used two different bus lines - one was blue, one was yellow. Sorry I can't remember which was which, but they had almost identical routes and stops, but one allowed you to purchase a 48 hour pass which was only about 5 Euros more than the other line's 24 hour pass. That was a much better deal. We were satisfied with both.

If you want to save a lot of money, get far more stops and see a lot more, use the 87,81 and 492 city buses. The 116 electric will take you through a lot of smaller streets, but it can be an adventure since the batteries often die.

The problem with the 110 is that it only stops in about a dozen locations. You have no guarantee that you will get back on. Also, the plug-in audio system only works about 1/2 the time.

If you do the Appian Way, instead of the Archeobus, you can also do a city bus on it. If I remember it is like the 118. It starts at Circus Maximus.

dave

There are definitely buses that go out either the Appian Way or to the aqueducts. We were not able to figure out another option that went out as far on the appian way and provided transportation in a loop to both areas.

We did find regular buses worked in the center of the city when we could not walk. The per trip charge is very reasonable at 1 euro/ride and there are also one day and multi day passes.