Highlights of Europe Vacation Tour Package

The trip was good and the travel company did their job well. I'm particularly pleased with their recommended hotel location in all 5 cities - Rome, Florence, Milan, Interlaken and Lucerne. The hotels are centrally located and provides easy access to most of the desired attractions.

However, improvement can be made if we are informed clearly that certain area of visit are really really near the hotel, and easily accesible by wheelchair so that transport may not be required. 

To be precise, I've enquired about visiting Trastevere and were informed that we need transport arrangement to get there. Luckily the hotel staff in Rome gave us both directiions and restaurant recommendations as it's wonderfully near our  hotel and we managed to had lunch there with our wheelchair bound son.

Similarly our morning date with a chocolate facility in Interlaken was also very near the hotel of stay, hence the car is not required for that morning. 

Perhaps more detail should be given so that travellers can make their own decision on the requirement of the car as I understand these constitute a big part of the cost when making the quotation for each customer's travel plans.

Locations Visited: Venice, Verona, Florence, San Gimignano, Siena, Pienze, Rome, Pompeii, Positano

My husband and I planned this trip for our 10-year anniversary. I’m a person with high expectation and this travel agency exceeded all my expectations. The entire trip was dream.

We opted for personalized tours and transport for 95% of our trip. All of our drivers were wonderful. They arrived on time and made sure we made it to all of our destinations without issue. They had the contact information for the tour guides we were meeting. Upon arrival to our first hotel, a local cell phone and gift were given to us. Having the iPhone during our trip made any needed communication with our agent and his team a breeze. In addition, we used the phone apps for navigation throughout the cities we visited. We made a last-minute request for an additional private transport, and our agent was able to make it happen. We greatly appreciated their customer service.

We participated in a several unique experiences while in Italy. We went truffle hunting in Pienza, which was amazing. After, we were served a meal that highlighted truffles and the cheeses made locally. In addition, we did a cooking day in Rome. This was a private cooking class where we made pasta, several sauces, and appetizers. The one disappointment is that we never received the recipes from the chef (we were told by the chef that they would be emailed to us). However, this is a knock on the chef and not our travel agent. Once the class was done, we were served a meal in a private garden area. Lastly, we did a food walking tour in Rome. This was an amazing way to find local cuisine that we wouldn’t have known about otherwise. A wonderful experience.

All of our tour guides were excellent. They were knowledgeable, friendly, and familiar with the cities. We had one guide that really went into the details and reasons for expressions in the art. We didn’t care for that, but we didn’t specify that ahead of time or to the guide. It was wonderful seeing her excitement and passion for all of the amazing working works of art and sculpture that we saw.

Overall, I would highly recommend this travel agent and his team if you are traveling to Italy!! You will not be disappointed. We gave him our wish list of activities, accommodation preferences, etc. ahead of time and he made sure we got them all! Thank you for such a wonderful and memorable trip. If we are able to return to Italy, you will be hearing from us.

We decided on the location and planned the trip to the three Italian cities of Venice, Florence and Rome only about a month before. Using this travel agency thru Zicasso was key to getting hotels with great locations, good tour guides, transfer arrangements and proper timing for touring of all the cities. The trip went very smoothly and we were able to focus on enjoying the trip.

We returned home earlier this week and we are so energized from the amazing Europe trip. We are very grateful and thankful to our travel agency for planning a very customized, relaxed, fun and amazing time.

To begin, London the hotels location was great as well the room. We enjoyed the trip up to Windsor, Stonehenge and Bath. Lots to see an enjoy. We also visited the Tower of London on our own time and would recommend others to visit as well. 

Then Paris with the dinner cruise on the river was very beautiful and delicious. We also enjoyed visiting the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre. 

In Venice we liked the quite hotel location even though it was a slight walk from the city center. We enjoyed the food tour as well the private tour which gave us great insight about the beautiful town! 

Finally Rome, the location was great although the rooms could use upgrade. The most memorable part of our trip was the Pasta class. My husband  was so excited he came home and made some pasta already.

Again thank you for planning our trip and setting us up in the best parts of town. We also found the private transport to be a big relief - especially in Venice!

We would like to thank everyone at this Italy travel agency but especially our travel specialist, for a the trip of a lifetime!  

Everything was exceptional - our specialist worked directly with us to create the itinerary for 4 main city stops (Venice, Florence, Siena and Rome), that included private tours in each city, but also provided a lot of personal time where we could explore each location as much as we wanted.  She also organized a day trip to Pompeii, that 2 in our party thoroughly enjoyed.

She made sure we had everything we needed travel-wise (i.e. Water Taxi's in Venice, Train travel to Florence and Siena, Bus ride to Rome and travel to and from Airports in Venice and Rome) that we didn't have to worry about anything.  All the hotel stays were great experiences and the tour guides in each city were all fantastic (very personable and knowledgeable), and by setting up the tickets for all of the main locations - we could spend much as we liked in each venue and skipped having to 'standing in line'.

We have done nothing but praise this company and our travel specialist to all our friends, family and co-workers, ever since we got back.

We can't think of anyone else we would using for any future trips to Italy.  We are planning on a trip in a couple of years to Paris, and while I doubt this agency can help us with that - we will still contact them for a travel company who can!

Your overall comments on Zicasso

You and your associated travel companies do an exceptional job!

Overall, the tour planned for us was incredible in scope. We appreciate how much coordination goes into planning stays at five locations for five people (two couples and a single) over a 14-day period. One of the advantages to having a professional handle the logistics of such a journey is foreknowledge of the available lodgings, and this was certainly evident here. Each hotel, in our opinion, was unique in its own way and representative of each particular locale, especially  from the ornate rooms in Venice, to the rustic charm of the farmhouse in Tuscany, to the mountainside accomodations in Positano; each was outstanding. We also appreciated the manner in which our travel agency provided us with important phone numbers, pictures of guides, dining recommendations and other valuable information.

Most impressive, I think we all agreed, was the transportation between destinations. The rides were comfortable, and the drivers were courteous and knowledgeable; I do not believe we would have been able to arrange this part of the trip as well as it was handled by this travel agency. (A special shout-out goes to our Venice to Florence driver who arranged an impromptu visit to a balsamic vinegar farm while we were en route!)

Our travel agency's choice of guides was equally laudable; each was accommodating and knowledgeable. They expedited our entries into the various attractions, allowed us to go at our own pace to a great degree, gave us some excellent restaurant suggestions, and basically made us feel special. In retrospect, I feel that we should have not scheduled as many tours as we did and left more time for independent exploration, but that certainly was not the fault of this company; we were the ones who drove the schedule. That being said, the golf cart tour of Rome seemed like a good idea at the start, but I don’t think it was what we expected; we found many of the destinations uninteresting and mostly forgettable. We found what we felt would have been better places to visit just from walking around Rome on our own.

The one big negative of the entire trip was our final stop in Positano. We had required, and were given, three rooms at all of our other locations, but for some reason, the travel agency originally booked only two rooms for us in Positano, meaning that our single traveler would have to bunk with one of the couples for three nights in a one bed, one bath room. We only found out about this arrangement a month before our trip, and would not have even known about it if one of our party didn’t notice it on her own. Our travel agency's solution was to house the single traveler in a separate hotel for two nights and then with one of our couples for the final night…inconvenient, but doable. However, upon reaching Positano, we found an error in the reservation (the wrong dates were reserved…how does this happen?) and ended up with one room for four people. At this point, we were unable to reach any a company representative; the problem was eventually solved by the hotel manager at the hotel, but it involved us staying in three separate (and not co-located) hotels for one night, two separate locations for the second night, and finally all of us in a villa the last night. The villa was probably our favorite lodging, and things worked out in the end, but unfortunately, this was no thanks to our travel agency.

This is really a shame because this trip was so well-planned, and yet, the freshest memory we have of it was this last situation. Many times we were amazed how our travel agency found all of the people and places, such as the Chef’s Dinner in Florence and the honey and wine tasting in Tuscany, that made this a once in a lifetime experience. We expected there to be missteps along the way in an undertaking of this size, but it seems like that whole Positano debacle could have been avoided if the correct reservations were made at the outset when we all agreed upon them.