Traveler Comments

Hi Mary!

I wanted to thank you for donating that wonderful trip to Italy!  We got back on Saturday and had a fabulous time!

I was wondering if it was possible to mention Experience Italy in the newsletter and what a fantastic job they did in planning our trip!!

The organization and accommodations were perfect and we can’t thank them enough!!

Thanks again for your part in that dream vacation!!!

Cindy

Dick and Lori

Wanted to let you know my trip to Italy was great.  You guys did a great job.  The itinerary was perfect.  The people who ran the hotels we stayed at were extremely nice and helpful.  Wonderful people.

I particularly loved Florence and Siena.  The only part of the trip I didn’t like was Rome.  You were absolutely right, very busy and hectic.  Personally four days was too long.  I could have gotten by with two days tops.

The tour guide at Vatican, train and opera were great.  You might be hearing from some of my friends who want to go to Italy.  I have one who wants to go fairly soon.

Thank you for your insightful and useful tips.  Everything worked out and I loved the trip.

In Ja

Dick & Lori,

Will and I would like to thank you very much for a wonderful journey to Italy.  We had such a good time!

Having someone meet us at the airport in Venice made all the difference in the world.  It was so nice to have a smiling face help us get acclimated.  Venice was beautiful.  The top of the Duomo in Florence was breathtaking.  And the coliseum and forum in Rome were amazing.  The weather was perfect.  The dinners delicious.  We even found a great dance club in the “bohemian corridor” of Rome.

On our way home, having the car to the airport made the ending of our trip as smooth as the beginning, which was nice.  But it was so hard to leave!

Thank you for putting everything together for us.  We will, of course, always highly recommend EXPERIENCE ITALY!

Paul
Folsom, CA

Dear Dick, Lori and Kathy,

Just had to tell you the best thing we ever did was to come to you to help us arrange our trip!

There were so many times during our stay, that we said to each other we could not wait to let you know that you had really done a good job.  Every place we went we would talk at the end of the day and say we were going to be sure you knew how much we appreciated that we hired you.

We all said to each other this was a trip of a life time.

Thank You

Vicky

Dear Dick and Lori

Our trip was fantastic!  Thank you so much for your help.  We would never have had the wonderful experiences that we did without your help and planning!

All our train trips were without incident except for the very last trip from Rome Termini to the airport!  We had saved just enough Euros to buy our 11.00 tickets and the machine ate 10.00 of it.  We could not get anyone to help us and the lines at the main ticket windows were very long.  While I was in line, Art found a machine that took a credit card and he bought two tickets and we ran for the train and got on with at least one minute to spare!  We made our plane ok, but should have allowed more than the 3 hours that we had planned to make the flight because there are so many buses from place to place to get to the plane!

The hotel in Sorrento was great; we had a balcony with a view of the ocean!  The room was small, but had incredible tile work in the bathroom, I took pictures! We went to Pompeii, Capri (a magical $100 Mother’s Day lunch), bus to Amalfi and Positano.  Train to Arezzo and picked up our car and found Rosa dei Vente quite easily.  What an amzing place.  I would have never found something like this on my own.  We loved our apartment, cooked breakfast and dinner there, plus had one dinner with the family and two other couples.  It was great, we visited Cortona, Montalcino, Pienza and Sienna.  Our cooking class in Montepulciano was fantastic, and our wine tasting (very hard to find, but we did it) was one of the high points of the trip!

We found ourselves in the middle of a vintage car tour/race as we drove to Florence, sometimes we just drove along and sometimes we parked and watched.  The most difficult part of the trip was 1) buying gas, the machine ate 10 euros and 2) returning the rental car in Florence.  Wow, we got so lost, even with a map and help from Sara at the B & B in Fiesole, where we went first to drop off our luggage (Which we found without a map, because I had not been able to get one along the way).

We loved Fiesole!  It was great to get out of the crowded city each evening and have our dinner overlooking the city.  I ate calamari stuffed with caponata at the Aurora, it was like nothing I’ve never had before, but it was great.  They gave us glasses of Prosecco and we sat down and it was a fantastic evening. The walking tour in Florence was great; we saw the David and many other amazing things and did some shopping at the San Lorenzo market.

We were very happy with the hotel in Rome; we walked or used the Hop-On/Hop-Off bus as our public transportation. (Our ticket from Florence gave us 10% off the Rome ticket and was good for two days!) We enjoyed our walking tour; but one of the highlights of the trip was getting off the bus and walking to St Peters Square and seeing the Pope giving a public audience (for about 2000 people); the Vatican Museums was amazing (the voucher that I printed from an e-mail worked just fine).  After the museums we walked right into St Peters and the Pope was giving mass!  We walked around looking at amazing works of art while listening to the Pope and a choir!  Did you plan that?  We loved the Borghese Gallery; we would go back again if we could!

Your planning was great, I would never have been able to pick the varied type of hotels that you found for us; they all gave a unique experience that we loved.  The office in Rome was very helpful, I called a couple times for directions and they responded immediately.  The price of food was obscene, but very good most of the time. I ate my fill of eggplant parmesan and we drank a lot of great red wine, the house Vino Rosso was always very good!  We bought several bottles of wine and brought them home in our luggage.  We also bought olive oil from each of the areas we visited and a bottle of 30 year old Balsamic Vinegar that we found in a shop in Florence!

Overall, it was a trip of a lifetime, thank you so much!  If you ever need additional staff, planning trips like this is something that I would love to do!

Sincerely,

Tami