We are a family of 6 (2 adults and 4 teenage boys) traveling to Rome
in August from the US and after much.much research, have narrowed the tours to

Walks Of Italy or

Walks Inside Rome.

Does anyone have any information or experience with two tour companies?

I've got 4 teenage boys who will probably get bored within 10 minutes!!

Also, over a 6 day period, we are planning:

A guided tour of the Vatican
A guided tour of the Colosseum, forum and ruins.
A SCAVI Tour (just got confirmation!)

And maybe a day trip to Pompeii.

The other days will be self guided at the boys leisure.

Any other suggestions?

THANK YOU!!

Lisa K

Context Rome

If they are bored within 10 minutes then they re very sadly lacking in imagination. Be sure they see a couple of the classic Roman gladiator movies - esp Ben Hur. that may pep them up a little bit.

And if they're teens haven;t they had world history yet? No connection to Julius Caesar, Hannibal crossing the Alps, the barbarians invading Rome???

Please pardon me! I was trying to be funny. My humor was not funny at all. I apologize.

The boys are very excited about Rome and the tours.

I was hoping for a good tour operator to keep their interest. All of our interests I guess. I've heard stories about quick talking guides who run through the Vatican too quickly.

My apology for the attempt at juvenile humor.

Does anyone have any experience with these companies?

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

THANK YOU!

We were in Rome for a week in March and took 2 tours with Walks of Italy. Our first night we went on the Twilight Walk. It was just my husband and I and one other couple and we thought the tour was excellent. We learned and saw a lot and it was a great introduction to the city. The other tour was Pristine Sistine and we were the only ones on it. So we got a private tour at a group tour price! Both guides were excellent and knowledgeable and spoke perfect English. I suspect that things will be busier in August, but I liked that they guarantee a group size of no more than 12. I highly recommend them!

We just got back and used Walks of Italy. I found this company to be very professional and very informative. We had signed up for the "Eternity in a Day" tour, which hits all of the hightlights. We were only there for 2 1/2 days, so thought this was best. Fortunately, there was a labor strike the day of our tour, so we had to break the tour into two half days. We say, lucky for us, because a 7 hour tour in 98+ degree weather would have been too long for anyone, regardless of how much you love history and how good your feet were feeling!

Therefore, we had two different guides and they both knew their history and made it exciting. I also had direct contact with 2 other representatives from the company. They went out of their way to rearrange our tour and answer all of our questions.

Ours was a private tour, well actually, only the first day was due to us having to break the tour into two parts. The second morning we had 6 other people with our party of 7. If you can, I suggest that you go private, especially for the Vatican. I saw way too many large groups and thought that it would be a much less enjoyable experience. (These were not Walk of Italy groups. I am not sure how "large" their group tours are.) In all, I don't think you will go wrong with Walks of Italy. Just be sure to consider the length of each tour you select so that your teen boys don't start to check out on you.

There are also some names of private tour guides that you can find on the postings on Fodors. I contacted two of them but they were already booked. I'm certain that they would have been wonderful guides as well. Just poke around this forum and you'll find their names. I think the one is Francesca who is used in Rick Steves guided tours. Another is Sonia. I had email contact with her and would have used her if our dates and times would have been available. Her email is [email protected]

Happy planning!

"I was hoping for a good tour operator to keep their interest. All of our interests I guess."

BINGO!

Human interest stories make a jumbled pile of rocks come alive, anyone can drone on about "1st built in...destroyed by fire in...rebuilt by..."

I am one of Context Rome biggest supporters over the years and they are the best.

Of the many tours I have taken only 2 bored me to tears.

The 1st when it was originally Scala Reale and the guide was an archaeologist.
She had all kinds of letters after her name, went to and taught at World famous universities, did 1 or 2 documentries, etc.
She couldn't have made the Colosseum, Palatine and Roman Forum any more boring with just plain facts and figures.

The 2nd was a art museum tour with a published author who was working on a BBC? documentary about his book.
Again just 'facts & figures' and nothing to make the art or artist come alive.

On the other hand I have overheard guides telling amazing interesting stories in the Roman Forum...but it would have been even better if their stories were true.

There are many sites in Rome that you will see on your own just wandering around, I suggest you pick-up the 'Oxford Archaeological Guide-Rome' for detailed info, which is alot better than "I wonder what that is?" . Regards, Walter

I read this with interest, since I will be in Rome with my two teenage boys in August. We have signed up for the Vatican Museum tour, but thought that we would manage the Colosseum and Forum with the Rick Steves audioguides on our iPhones.

BTW, I totally can relate to the humor about keeping their interest because it could be challenging for them if they have to strain to understand a heavy Italian accent with a lot of competition from other tour guides nearby. As an adult, I have found it hard to follow some tour guides, especially in crowded situations. And as a retired teacher, we all know that it's hard to keep students' interests longer than about 20 minutes at a time!

Not sure if nytraveler was being serious with the recommendation for Ben Hur, but I might just watch it with them anyway to help build a little pre-trip excitement that their World History classes might not have been able to do.

Ben-Hur is great movie no doubt and would be great to give them an idea of what the chariot races in the Circus Maximus were like.

But the chained and whipped galley slaves was fictional, the rowers were paid trained freeman and when slaves were needed in a wartime emergency they were given their freedom (I believe there was 1 exception around the 2ndC BC when it was one trained leadman rower with 4 slaves with him on the oar).

Slaves would require too much security plus these sailors would beach themselves for the night to set-up camp when possible.
And think of the hygene/health/physical fitness issues if slaves where chained in the galley 24/7 so they couldn't revolt plus having an escape vehicle would make that even more tempting.
Regards, Walter

Hi Kroencke,

I went on a few tours with Walks of Italy last year and they were all great! Both companies are highly rated here on TA so that's a plus. We liked walks for their "Pristine Sistine" tour but I don't know if your kids would want to get up that early. I would also suggest checking out the catacombs tour, the one with the bone crypts, because that was a huge hit with our kids. Also, I foliow a blog about Rome called browsingrome and the blogger there recently posted about a food tour the walks people are offering that wasn't there last year. Here is the link to it:

browsingrome.com/rome-travel-guide/…13534

Hope that helps, and have an awesome time! Rome is GREAT with kids, other cities are more difficult. Oh also, try to get into "Palazzo Valentini" as I've heard booking this visit is really amazing for kids too. Good luck!

-Jeremy

IMHO the best place of all for a guide is the forum -even with Walter's wonderful information it's still just a pile of stones to me. [no imagination at all!]

the colosseum is far more accessible but most tours take in both, so you might as well have the guide for both.

i am less convinced about having a guide for the vatican - like us our kids managed perfectly well with the info from the guide book for the 5 or so hours that we were there [not by choice, we got lost] but i suppose a guide might have helped us to avoid going round some of it twice.

rather than go to Pompeii - a very long day in the heat - why not go to ostia antica where your kids can run about a bit amongst the ruins?

another nice day-trip is out to Tivoli to see the Villa D'este - the fountains are particularly welcome on a hot day, and there are nice restaurants to visit afterwards in the town. a tour that takes you there might be preferable to doing it on your own as a tour bus will have a/c!

BTW, the things that our then teenage kids liked best were going out and getting breakfast at the same place, [DS loved doing that, especially when he went out and brought the cornetti back to our apartment all by himself] visiting the local gelateria in the evening and standing next to the local carabinierei having their gelati too, going into the local bar for a coffee and having the waiter say "ciao" to them.

they will enjoy it a lot more if they [and you] have a few words of italian for please, thank you, etc.

THANK YOU EVERYONE!

I love everyone's upbeat additions.

GREAT advice from ann, walter and all.

If your children have ipods it is possible to download free podcasts of lots of the sites. I'm not saying for one minute that this will be a better option than a tour, but it's a good way to pique their interest in advance. We sometimes listened to them on the train etc.

Thought of another one: Trajan's markets near piazza Venezia. It's an open-air museum, like the forum, but the kids can literally run around through the ruins. It's pretty fun and can be done in an hour!

-jeremy