...for Monday, June 30, 2008...if it matters.

We took the Official Vatican tour. Reserved it easily by email. Got response within 24 hours. <[email protected]>

We got to walk past the 12,548 people waiting in line outside the museum, and enjoyed our tour with a fantastic guide.

It was well worth the extra money in our opinion.

http://tinyurl.com/g2gyd

Enjoy!

We used Presto tours. It was our least favorite tour of our trip. They come highly recommended and is why we selected them.

There was nothing "wrong' with it. Our tour guide was hard to understand and was far too detailed for our daughters. (10 and 13).

I loved our Context tours - we used them in Florence and in Rome.

Hope that helps.

We used one that was very good in the sense that the guide was both pleasant and seemingly quite knowledgeable. However, I do not remember the name of the company.

I recommend that you go with the recommendation of shelly-m, b/c even though our tour was good, we *did* wait behind the 12,458 people in line for a LONG time in the hot sun!

Used Context Tours, a group of just 6, a native English speaking guide who, you could tell, loved the Vatican museum. They respond quickly to emails and sent us some pre-tour information that we found very interesting. Will definitely use them again.

For those that mentioned, "Context Tours" do you have any contact information on them? Web site or e-mail address would be appreciated. My family with kids 15 and 12 would love to see the Vatican. I cannot imagine waiting in line and would truly welcome a tour for easy admittance.

THANK YOU!!!

NOT NEEDED- they are very expensive and we will use the much more reasonable Official Vatican tour.

Has anyone booked through www.vaticanguide.com? I am trying to figure this process out, and I am nervous to book with the Official Vatican tour because we will not be in Rome until 2 weeks into our trip and we may not have access to a fax machine to receive the official confirmation. This vaticanguide tour can be booked via email, which I will be able to access while we are traveling on our way to Rome. If anyone has any thoughts or comments on vaticanguide, I'd love to hear them! Thanks!

Just wanted to let you know that you can book the official vatican tour guide via email, as well. Their email address is listed above in my other post.

They promptly emailed me back a confirmation, which I presented on the day of my tour.

Very easy, no problem at all.

Enjoy your trip!

I just wanted to say that Context was worth every euro we paid.

I booked the Official Vatican Tour today via email (someone listed it above) and had an email confirmation within 4 hours. It was v. easy. We are going June 9.

MomDDTravel - which Context tour did you take? Were you able to skip the lines with the Context tour? The one that looks best for us is the Arte Vaticana (4 hours at 70 euros/pp). I am afraid 4 hours might be too much for our 9 year old. However, I do like that it includes St. Peter's Basilica - it looks like the official Vatican tour (2 hours) does not include St. Peter's Basiilica.

My husband is taking a running tour of Rome with Context Tours on Father's Day - I'll let you know how that goes!

Thanks Shelly_M for the email link - now I just need to make a decision as to which tour to take!

http://tinyurl.com/4ctb79

Emily Wise Miller was fantastic. We took our 10 and 13 year old on this walk and they loved it.

http://tinyurl.com/4o2d4p

Patrizia Sfligiotti was our guide and she was amazing. I adored her! She was delightful, engaged my children and really made the entire tour fabulous.

I know that they were both expensive but I really would do it over again if it is in the budget at all.

Oh and sorry - there really were no lines so it was not needed to skip. We did not use them for the Vatican.

We used the official vatican guide service. Our guide was wonderful.

We used Cecilia with Context Rome for the Forum tour and subsequently for the Arte Vaticana tour. She was absolutely fantastic and we would highly recommend her.