Mediterranean Vacation Ideas

We experienced a fabulous twelve night first trip ever to Europe staying in Rome, Sorrento, and Florence with day visits to Naples, Pompeii and Herculaneum, a drive with stops and photo-ops through the beautiful Amalfi coast villages to Ravello, and a day trip to historic Siena and San Gimignano through the Chianti region of Tuscany. Our travel consultant and her colleague at the company in Rome, proved to be perceptive to our interests, resourceful in finding spot-on solutions within our budget and patient professionals as we explored various itinerary options. Both women spoke and wrote english very well to thoughtfully help us plan our itinerary for three adults with private transportation and guides. Our private guides in Rome; in Pompeii and Herculaneum; in Naples; one a Canadian ex-pat in Florence; and in Siena, informed our discovery of each locale and its many treasures.  We also did two small group tours. First, a farm/food tour near Sorrento with an incredibly informative and entertaining guide, and catacombs at Saint Sebastian with a nameless guide and small group of 9 during our Appian way visit and final full day in Rome. At times we were chaperoned in private vehicles with english speaking drivers knowledgeable of their territories. In Rome, in Naples, in the Bay of Naples Sorrento area, in Tuscany, and in Amalfi. We wouldn't hesitate to recommend this company to help others plan the vacation of a lifetime.

Our travel agent was good when it came to being available and responsive, she stuck with our budget had ideas of where to go and what to do. Her husband was also nice and happened to meet us in Rome and was able to make us reservations at a great restaurant. the hotels we were at were at central locations which was nice and convenient. she had good tips and tricks as well for each of the cities. 

We had a few issues though, in Rome the tour guide did not meet us on time and did not have us on their schedule, they did scramble and we did not miss our tour. In Sorrento our tour to capri was cancelled which was not her fault, the guide said it was due to weather but then next day it was nice and sunny and we saw other tour boats go out, but we never got a phone call that day to go out. that was a disappointment, we still went to capri on our own though. In Greece, our sunset tour in Mykonos was late and that scared us since we had the mishap in Rome, but we were still on our tour. 

some suggestions for our agent would be to update her restaurant recommendations, some places did need reservations when she did not mention it, and some places had a new chef. some of her tour guides were not the people she had said it would be, especially our driver for the amalfi coast, who mostly drove us to places, he was not too informative about the coast as she had described, so much so that i fell asleep during the drive! and a few of her tour guides she scheduled for us, did not follow the itinerary to a tee, and left us a bit early 45min to an hour, which i believe we paid for the full time. and our guide in athens, took a smoke break a few times and said she had an 'emergency'

I have to begin by saying I've told everyone how pleased I am with Zicasso and the travel agent they recommended.  I also have to say that I was very hesitant to book my trip with a company that I had only communicated with via email.  Turns out I had nothing to worry about.

The initial response I received from my agent was immediate and continued right up until our actual trip while we were in Italy.  I let her know where I wanted to go, what I wanted to see, told her I was interested in a mix of arranged tours and time on our own.  She listened and also made great suggestions.  I honestly can't say enough about how wonderful she was to work with, along with her co-worker.

They arranged for all our hotels, transportation and tours.  Every driver and guide we had was top notch.  They made a point of keeping us in small groups, sometimes only the two of us and the guide.

Our 19 day trip began in Venice where we were met at the airport and driven to a private water taxi.  That driver walked us out of the boat and made sure we knew how to find our hotel. Our departure was just as seamless.  A guide met us in our lobby, walked with us to the water taxi, came into the train station with us and explained the board to us, pointing out our train and track number.  

We continued on to Verona, Cinque Terre, Tuscany, Florence, Naples, the Amalfi Coast and Rome.  Since we weren't in any one place longer than three days it was extremely helpful to have guides, even for just a couple of hours to orient us, which saved us a lot of time.  We had guides for a walking tour in Venice, a morning in Cinque Terre traveling with us between the villages, the Accademia in Florence, Pompeii, an Amalfi Coast drive and the Vatican in Rome.  Every one of the them was passionate and proud and we learned so much.  We had a car in Tuscany and saw many other places on our own, Lucca, Pisa, San Gimignano, Siena, Montalcino, Montepulciano.  We stayed in Sorrento, spent one day on Capri and another full day on a tour to Positano, Amalfi and Ravello, which included a short boat ride along the coast.  Spectacular.  Our only tour in Rome was the Vatican but we saw all the other major sites on our own, taking the metro, bus, taxis and walking, lots of walking.  It was the perfect mix of free time and arranged tours.

And, they also worked with our children who surprised us with a dinner in Venice for our anniversary after a gondola ride!

One great advantage to having your tour guide in the country you're visiting, you're in the same time zone.  We had one mishap with a train and were able to talk to them right away.  Other than that, everything worked liked clockwork.

I would definitely use them again and have told everyone I know what a wonderful job they did for us.

My trip was a perfect match to what my daughter and I wanted!  Our agent truly listened to what I said we enjoyed and what we wanted to do, and she put together a trip that had a lot of variety and was fun and memorable for us.  We traveled to 3 locations in Italy with another friend and her daughter, and our agent worked with all of us to find comfortable and safe accommodations in 3 cities for us, as well as family friendly tours for pre-teens and adults.  

Itinerary:

Day 1 Arrival in Venice.  Gondola ride.  

Day 2 Private walking tour of Venice.  PM visit to islands of Murano and Burano

Day 3 Travel to Rome.  Pizza making class. 

Day 4 Initially unplanned/later papal audience tickets

Day 5 Vatican Museum family tour and Colosseum family tour

Day 6 Travel to Amalfi Coast.  Tour Pompeii. .

Day 7 Boat tour around and to Capri

Day 8 Tour of Sorrento with olive oil tasting, mozzarella making demo, and limoncello tasting

Day 9 Tour of Amalfi and Ravello 

Day 10 Travel to Naples to depart : (