letsgo39

I've traveled with Globus 4 times including a Avalon river cruise. Been to Venice 2 times with Globus. One time we stayed in Mestre and the other in Venice right off San Marco. The descriptions of the tours are very specific including the hotels you will stay at in each city. Do your research so you will not be surprised. I look up every hotel on Tripadvisor so I know exactly what I am going to be paying for.Globus has a couple of leisurely Italy tours that have a lot of free time. I have always been satisfied with Globus but we book tours that have at least 2 days in each location.We do not take hardly any optionals preferring to do most things on our own. I have never had a tour guide be annoyed that we don't participate in the optionals. They are have always been very helpful advising us on public transportation and entrance fees for museums.

Aduchamp1

I have never taken a tour except for an occasional day tour, but I think it is interesting for Steve Perillo to offer some insight. Yes, I understand that he runs for a for profit business. But this is a way to inform someone why people do and do not take tours.

TomThumb

I am about to book a tour of Rome, Venice & Florence with Go Ahead tours. Does anyone have experience with this company? Thanks.

sperillo

TT - Please take a look at this tour. No pressure! I know we're pricier, but you'll stay in only Superior First Class or Deluxe hotels, as well as great restaurant dinners with wines every night and extensive sightseeing.

http://www.perillotours.com/italy/to...rat/index.html

Buon viaggio!

Steve

crefloors

Looks like a nice tour. I loved the gondola ride with our tour. We had a singer too, and it was so corney but great. We went down some of the little side canals with laundry hanging from windows and some people sitting by their apartment windows waving to us. It was great. There was a woman in our group that just started bawling when the singer began his song....."oh this..sniff sniff....is SO romatic..sniff, sniff." She was very cute. No matter what tour they do, they gotta ride the gondola.

Sassafrass

Hey, Crefloors, I agree about the gondola ride. It is romantic, at least to me. I've done it four times now. Once, when I took students, we were in a gondola in a little side canal. They were so quiet, I was worried they weren't having a good time. Suddenly, one of the girls whispered, "I'm coming here on my honeymoon."

nytraveler

While I'm sure this is a very nice tour, to me it epitomizes all that's wrong with them.

You can't really see so many places in so few days. IMHO a first visit to Rome requires at least 5 days (6 nights) and for Florence and Venice 3 days each (4 nights). IMHO, to do that itinerary properly you would need a minimum of 16 days - not 11.

And while the hotels certainly look comfortable, and several of them are well known, others are not near the centers of the cities (vital to me). I want to walk out the door and be there - not go looking for a cab or bus or tube in from a residential area or suburb.

As for meals, can't comment, except that generally group meals are simply not as good as food ordered fresh from a menu. And in Italy wine is as cheap as water - and probably less than soft drinks. (Does the menu offer free bottled water as well as free wine? And then there's wine and wine. Generally we just take the house wine - unless it's a special restaurant - and they're usually drinkable. Every once in a while not so much.)

For people who want everything taken care of for them, and not to do any research, it's not a bad way to go. It just seems that you miss so much by not doing the work yourself - and having the fun of getting a little lost and finding something fascinating or spending a couple of hours in a cafe drinking a campari and soda and watching the world go by.

Gary_Gibbs

My wife and I took a 14 day Perillo Italy tour (Milan to Rome) in Oct/Nov 2008. It was our first guided tour and it was an overall excellent experience. The make or break factor was the tour director and ours (a Brit expatriate named Saundra) was exceptional. She was encyclopedic and very funny in that droll British way. Our driver, Georgio, did things with a tour bus I'm not sure I could have done in a sports car.

The hotels were nothing exceptional (a typical motel in the States would get a five star rating in Italy) and most of the food was average, but the itinerary was packed with value and there was a good balance between planned activities and free time. As a nod to some of the earlier posts, we stayed in Venice, about a five minute walk to St. Mark's square. Optional tours (we took most of them) were expensive, but our rationale was "You might only go to Italy once, so don't be a cheapskate."

We have had plenty of time to reflect on our trip and would grade it out as a solid four out of five.

Georgia_Olsen

We went on an 11-day tour of Italy with Perillo just last month. It was beyond our expectations. I have dietary restrictions and our tour leader was amazing with telling each restaurant about my needs. Our group had 24 people in it and we still had a full size bus. We had plenty of time to go inside and see each sight. My husband and I would highly recommend Perillo to anyone looking for organized travel.

We had traveled on our own many times to other countries in Europe, but had never traveled in Italy. Because of unfamiliarity with the country and our desire to see so much we felt a group tour would be better for this trip. We were not disappointed.

You do get what you pay for. I used to be a foreign language teacher at the high school level and took groups of students with several different student companies. The hotels and the food were definitely at a much lower level, the bus was always full, and there was still only one tour leader for the entire group. Of course, the cost was only half what we paid with Perillo.

ashta

I am planning a trip June 2013 (2 adults and 2 teens). Are these group tours good for travel with teens (do they tend to have many teens or are they mostly older adults ?).

I know my teens like having other teens around when they travel - they can combine some "experiences with mom/dad" with occasional "experiences with peers" and everybody has more fun that way. But if the tours are mostly older adults they will not work at all for us...

Sassafrass

Ashta, As this thread is quite old, and asks about only two companies, you might do better starting a new thread. I can tell you though, that the answer depends on which company you go with. Some companies work with teachers and schools with tours designed primarily for teens and students (EF, CHA, Explorica, Passports, etc). At least one company does tours only for young adults (Contiki). Many are for general population (such as Globus) and a couple are targeted at older adults (such at Grand Circle). There are super cheap companies that provide basics, companies that provide everything, all those in between, and those that specialize in only one country.

You can be sure the tours for students will be filled with teens, but they probably won't be a tour you will enjoy. The others probably won't be what your kids will enjoy.

Start a new thread and say where you want to go, what your travel style is, how much time you have, etc. and you will get some great advice.

violetv

I was just researching 14 Day North Classic tour and there is a list of hotels - two in each city - how will I know which hotels we will stay in? Also, I went on Travelocity and read reviews on each of the hotels - there are many terrible reviews on all of them - poor service, dirty rooms, bad food, broken a/c, toilets, dirty linen, etc. I was comparing the hotels with Trafalgar, Inside and Globus and they also have few choices in every city - one usually is good, another is bad (based on review) - how and when do you know where you are staying in each city? Tour guide is very important, but if your hotel is located next the ambulance station (based on reviews for Grand Hotel Minerva) and you hear sirens all night long - you are not going to enjoy your next day trip that much. Or if the food is spoiled and rooms are dirty and smell of mold (Plaza Lucchesi based on reviews) - it might spoil your whole vacation.