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Sightseeing Tours for Your Italy Trip
DO YOU REALLY NEED ANY TOURS?
Like everything else in a travel recommendation, it depends....
Where are you going? How much time will you have in Italy? What are your interests? Do you have the time, ambition, and motivation to do some serious reading, so that you can guide yourself through the art, architecture, and history of a city like Rome or Venice? If so, maybe you know enough that you don't need a guide or a tour.
We've gone to lots of places in Europe and done our own sightseeing without the benefit of a guide or a group tour. We've enjoyed the freedom of being on our own. BUT, we've still been left with the feeling that we never fully appreciated what we saw, and maybe we missed seeing a lot of what was there.
On the other hand, we've also taken tours of all kinds, from private tours to large-group tours, and we usually felt that they were well worth the money. Now, with all that travel experience behind us, if we were taking a trip to a foreign country we have never visited before, we would definitely want a private guide, or a small-group tour, for at least half a day in each city. And if we could not get one of those, we would take a regular group tour. So our recommendation is that you take a good look at the choices and include some kind of sightseeing tours in your trip plan.
If your budget doesn't allow for buying sightseeing tours, fine. But if you won't have any tours, at least commit to reading and preparing yourself. We've spent too much of our travel time wandering around great destinations on our own, too stubborn to buy tours, but not having done our research, so that we didn't know enough about those places to make our travel experience as good as it could have been. |
USE THE LIST OF TOURS AS IDEAS
Regardless of whether you plan to buy any tours, we encourage you to read through the list of sightseeing options. That can be a great place to get ideas for how to spend your time -- and even for what to do on your own -- without a tour. If nothing else, doing that gives you an appreciation of the possibilities for what to do and see, and what can be done in a certain amount of time. You can then make better decisions about how best to spend your precious time in Italy. We like to have something to break us out of our preconceived notions.
Reading the list of sightseeing options for Rome, you may decide that there are activities you like more than the ones your friends said that you just "must do." The best independent travel is when it's really independent, in the sense that you do what you want, not what someone else says you should do. So go read the choices, and let yourself get excited about the possibilities. Have some fun with it, and don't pressure yourself either to buy a tour or avoid buying a tour. It's YOUR trip. |
GROUP TOURS versus PRIVATE TOURS
To us, there's no question that having a private guide in a city in Italy is the best way to go. If you're staying in a city for several days, you probably don't need a guide for all, or even most of your time there. Half a day with a guide is usually a good choice. In addition to getting an efficient introduction to the art, architecture, and history -- plus having the opportunity to ask advice about where to shop and eat and where to go on your own -- you also get the important travel experience of spending time with a person (your guide) who is native to a different culture. Apart from cost, we don't know the downside to having a private guide. You are in charge of the pace and how your time is spent. You tell the guide what you want to see and when to go on to doing something else. You also pay quite a lot for the privilege of having a private guide.
Most of us cannot afford private guides, or at least, not at all our destinations. So the next best alternative is a small-group tour. Small-group tours can be anywhere from about 8 to 25 people, but typically, they have around 15 people. That makes for a much more manageable group size than what you get with a full-size tour group (see below). It's easier to stay up with the tour leader, to hear or to ask questions. But there are not nearly as many options for small-group tours. When you can find one, it's a pretty good choice, usually only a little bit more costly than a tour with a full-size group,
Regular, or full-size, group tours, will have between 40 and 60 people, when they are fully booked. Sometimes you're fortunate, and the tour is not full, so you wind up with a small group that was supposed to be a big one, but don't bet on that.
Most group tours involve using a bus at some point in the tour schedule (see comments below about a bus).
You can probably imagine the issues that come with the larger groups. First, it takes more time to assemble the group. This is especially true for tours in which the group will be repeatedly getting on and off a bus. And in a big group, you need to work to stay close enough to the tour leader to "connect" as much as you might like, so that you can hear clearly and feel more comfortable asking questions. You are far less likely to be able to corner the guide of a large group, to ask a face-to-face question. With even a small-group tour, that is much easier, so that while walking from place to place, you can maneuver to be alongside the guide, and work in some private chats. We always marvel that more people don't try to do that.
Many, maybe most, of the choices you will have for group tours will be for full-size groups of around 50 people. Our own experience is that even with the disadvantages of being part of a large group, sightseeing tours are still valuable components of an independent trip. We always start out thinking we won't want to be part of a group, then wind up enjoying the experience in spite of ourselves.
Bottom line...get the most personal touring experience you can find and afford, whether private or small-group or full-size group. But do treat yourself to some kind of organized tours if you will be visiting the cities. Note that for countryside visits, it's entirely a different matter, and tours may not be in any way an issue or an option. |
WALKING TOURS versus TOURS WITH A BUS
There are some places where this is an important distinction. Rome is the best example we know.
When you take a bus tour, the first issue is that the meeting point for the tour must normally be where buses can park. This is something you should read about in the tour description. Do you need to walk, or take a taxi, half way across the city, just to get to where you can board the tour bus? And how long will it take to assemble the people on that bus? How many stops will the bus make, each of which requires that all those people must get on and off?
On the flip side, there is the comfort of having a bus, so that instead of standing or walking for the entire time of the tour, you get a chance to sit in comfort. If it's summer in Rome, the idea of having access to an air-conditioned bus may be the deciding factor in which tour you choose. Of course, you may not like the idea of going back and forth between an air-conditioned bus and the summer heat.
We confess that whenever possible, we prefer to take tours that do not involve a bus. So when choosing a Vatican Museums tour, for example, we like the ones where you go and meet the tour group near the entrance to the Vatican Museums, and just walk in, as opposed to the other tours where you first go to a meeting point, get on a bus, drive to the Vatican, get off the bus, and finally walk in.
We like the sound of many of the new touring options, the ones not available 5 years ago, when most all tours started with a bus ride. Now in Rome there are several choices for walking tours that never require you to go through the assembly routine for a bus group.
But don't embrace our preference too strongly, as there are still many tours that make no sense without use of a bus. You cannot get to Tivoli, a very appealing daytrip from Rome, without using a bus. You cannot take an illuminations tour around Rome in the evening, without using a bus. Don't avoid doing something you really want to do, just because the tour involves a bus. |
MORE THAN JUST TOURS
It used to be that when you looked at a list called "Sightseeing," you saw a lot of options for traditional group tours, meaning that a guide would ride around with you on a bus and get off at various places to walk around with you. Those options still exist and still serve their purpose.
But now there are lots of other options for activities, at least in the big cities, such as Rome, Florence and Venice. So check out the list, even if you don't expect to find anything you want, and you may be surprised.
There are now some small-group tours that are also walking tours, so that you don't need to get on a bus.
There are "untours," meaning activities that are not really tours, such as cooking classes and opportunities to do tastings, as for chocolate and wine.
You can choose to have one-on-one time with a professional photographer, who will walk with you in Rome and give you tips on how to take home some really impressive photos.
You can get a tours that use bicycles and segways for transportation.
There are tours with specialty themes, such as ghost tours, and tours based on popular books (Angels & Demons, in Rome).
You can also buy dinners under the Sightseeing category. Beats us how a dinner can be called sightseeing, but no matter. And some of the dinners do come with sightseeing, such as a Chianti tour that finishes with a dinner in a countryside location.
Take some time to look at the possibilities....you may feel like a kid in a candy shop. |
SCHEDULING ISSUES
Some tours and activities are only offered on certain days. So if you check for sightseeing options in Rome on a certain day, you will not see all the possibilities. For example, let's say you heard about the shuttle bus from Rome to Pompeii. You run a check for it on a Monday and don't see it, so you figure it's not offered. But if you checked for it on a Tuesday, you'd see it, because it only runs on Tuesdays and Fridays.
Watch out for scheduling conflicts. Don't get so wound up in the fun of booking activities that you book two of them that overlap, or a situation where you can't get from one of them to the other before it starts. The reservation system is dumb about this, and it will let you schedule direct conflicts.
Leave yourself some free time. Don't schedule too many commitments to being somewhere, doing something structured. You could wind up being too tired to do it all and being tempted to skip your next tour. Or you could schedule so many museum visits in Rome or Florence that you get numb looking at yet more fine art. Try to balance your sightseeing agenda, leaving time to just sit in a cafe or wander into an interesting shop. There's more to visiting Italy than catching all the "must-sees."
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READ THE FINE PRINT !
This is where we think you could be disappointed...if you don't know enough about what you're getting when you buy something under the sightseeing category. We're all too busy to read everything we should. And we all tend to see what we expect, and want, to see.
So...you think you're signing up for a walking tour, and you are, but before the walking tour, you must get yourself to a meeting point for a bus that takes you to where the walking tour will begin, and you find that you spend an hour of your time in Rome, getting to that point, waiting for people to assemble, and riding the bus, before the walking tour begins.
You don't notice that the price of the tour does not include the entrance fees to places the tour guide will take you. This can be a rude surprise. Some tours include the entrance fees, and some do not.
You find a specialty sightseeing tour you like and buy it. But you don't see that notice below that says it's your responsibility to check, at a later date, to be sure that the tour will be running. You go to the meeting point, and find a notice that it was cancelled -- due to lack of enough people signing up for it -- and you are just furious ! That does not happen very often. And when it does happen, certainly you get your money back. But that is little comfort during your trip.
You book a tour that includes churches in Rome, but you fail to notice that there is a dress code. So you show up in short shorts, and they don't let you go in.
More than for anything else you can book on this self-service website, we worry about people reading the details about the sightseeing activities. For your own good, please do read them. |
BAD WEATHER? NOT FEELING WELL?
When you book your sightseeing activities, you will see the terms and conditions. You will see that up to some point in time, you can cancel it without any penalty, and get your money back. But in no event will you be able to cancel it after you start on your trip. It's very important that you consider this when committing to a sightseeing activity.
It is certainly more convenient to book your sightseeing tours and other activities in advance, if for no other reason than the convenience of having them paid for, so that you don't need to pay for them in Italy, in euros. But you may decide that some activities should not be booked in advance.
What about the weather? Is weather critical to enjoying a certain activity? The best example we can think of is a gondola ride in Venice. Are you prepared to take a gondola ride in the rain, because you paid for it and cannot get your money back if you fail to show up? We have a hard time recommending that anyone buy a gondola ride in advance.
Or what if it's the middle of summer, it's hot and humid, and you're just not feeling well enough to take that walking tour in Rome? Can you get your money back? NO ! Now, that is just part of traveling, and maybe nothing to even consider. You must assume that you will feel well enough to do all that you planned, or you probably would not go in the first place.
Just do bear in mind when booking your activities that you cannot get money back, and it does not matter what happens with the weather or with how you're feeling, or because something delayed you and you could not get to the meeting point on time. It's kind of like buying tickets for a sports event. It could be pouring rain, but you paid for it, and that's that.
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