Tour recommendation
 

Would like to recieve a recommendation on an agency to book a tour to Italy

Good evening, Don check into <BR>www.italiatour.com/ <BR>www.getours.com/ <BR>www.perillotours.com/ <BR>Don't think you need a travel agency <BR>just be sure of what you want in your <BR>tour and in the price you want to pay. <BR>Personnally the location of the hotel <BR>is just behind the prime reason, the <BR>price is within the budget you wish <BR>to spend. Some tours have a tendency <BR>to place the hotel out in the boondocks, <BR>and others do not spend enough time <BR>within places, such as Venice.. <BR>Richard of La Grange Park, Il... <BR>

What month? <BR> <BR>Small group (custom, but not necessarily) tours can be an interesting alternative to commercial companies. Feel free to write me for more info if you are interested. <BR> <BR>And by the way, Perrillo (with which I am not affiliated in any way) offers something akin to small group tours, and they get nothing to rave reviews here. <BR> <BR>Best wishes, <BR> <BR>Rex

We have always scoffed at the idea of traveling with a tour group, but have changed our mind after using Overseas Adventure Travel to go to Costa Rica this summer. The group was relatively small (16), our tour guide was also a very knowledgable naturalist, and we stayed in small out of the way places. Some locations were so remote that electricity was by generator and the hot water was spotty, but we were in drop-dead beautiful areas at the edge of the rain forest and were awaken by howler monkeys each morning. We had such wonderful adventures and barely enough saw another tourist. I truly felt like I knew the country and people when we left. Some of the other members of this group were in their seventies and we had our two teenage sons with us, yet the activites were interesting for all age groups, and we came back the best of friends. Several people on this trip were very serious travelers, the kind who have done African safaris, trips to Nepal, China etc.. Anyway, they said that OAT was their favorite company. <BR> <BR>I have not traveled with Overseas Adventure Travel to Europe, but I do drool over their catalogs.(online at www.oat.com, I think)They offer a trip through Tuscany that looks interesting. My family is planning a trip to the area for this Dec., a month in which OAT does not do tours there. I am studying the brochure though to see what out of the way sights they go to that I might wish to incorporate in my trip. <BR> <BR>Have a great trip!

Don <BR>Whichever company you go with, do some reserach before you book it. Make sure the hotels they use are centrally located, so that you don't lose a lot of sightseeing time commuting to and from the outskirts of time. <BR>Get brochures from several tour companies, and read the itineraries. There is a whole other language that you have to learn to interpret. A phrase like "and on our drive we'll see the famous Leaning Tower" may mean that all you'll do is literally see it out the bus window as you drive by, not that you'll actually stop there. If one place is included as a "visit", find out how much time you'll actually have there. It might be only an hour. <BR>If it is important for you to see a particular site check the tour itinerary and a good guidebook to make sure that what you want is open on the day you will be in the city. The tour brochure may have language like "we'll visit the Accademia in Florence, schedule permitting". If your main day in Florence is a Monday, the Accademia will be closed. <BR>Expect checking in and out of hotels, plus transportation time to the next place, to take longer than you wish. (That's true even with independent travel.) "We'll arrive in Venice in the late morning" may mean that by the time you get caught in traffic, unload the bus, check in, and get settled, you don't get out for sightseeing until 2 or 3pm. If you're moving on the next morning, that's not much time in that particular place. <BR>I don't mean to cite only the negatives, only that you should do some reading and comparing before you go. Enjoy your trip.

oops, that freudian slip should really have been "outskirts of TOWN"