Italian Escapade

Insight vacations were excellent. Optional extras that we chose to do were very good. Felt travel guide and driver always had our best interests at heart. Our travel guide even stopped a person from being pick pocketed in Venice. 13 days was perfect. Sometimes thought it would have been nice to stay a bit longer but that was only because of the beautiful places we visited. Hotels and baggage was well organised. Had a wonderful time on this holiday!!

Very well planned out. Lots of great meals. Tour director was fantastic. Everything was set up for us. Only have to choose if you want to go on the extra excursions ( went on most and loved them ) No stress about booking rooms or travel and when seeing the most popular sites guides and times are chosen ahead of time for maximum efficiency. ( in Venice was everyone’s favourite )

It was very organized. We saw so much of Italy in our time. The tour director was extremely knowledgeable. We not only saw the main attractions, we were immersed in the Italian culture. We got to see the diversity of the country - and appreciate each and every area. From beginning to end, everything was seamless. The optional excursions were well worth the cost. Most of the food was superb. A few of the included meals at the hotels were not great. The Italian people were very warm and friendly. I can’t say enough about this trip. It far exceeded my expectations. This was my first tour and I did not know what to expect. It was wonderful to not have to make any decisions and be fully taken care of.

Our tour guide and driver were amazing. shared so much history and knowledge with us on the tour it was great. All the expert guides were very good as well. We covered a lot of sights in the itinerary during the trip that gave us a great overview of Italy and the extra excursions were awesome. Suggestions for future improvements would be that it would have been great to know and have more clarity on exactly which sites we were actually going into and when we would have free time during the day. Most sites we visited needed to purchase online timed tickets to enter so if we had free time we were unable to purchase tickets to get into these sites. It would be great to know at least the day before when our free time is, how long and possible suggested sites we could visit in the area. Obviously our free time would need the disclaimer that it's estimated but we could choose to leave the tour if we had a ticket for one of these sites. A clearer explanation in the overall itinerary would help as well, such as, we were not aware that our tour didn't go into the coliseum but only outside it, same with the vatican, St Mark's catherdral, etc. We would have loved to know this ahead of time to buy the timed tickets. Also, consider giving more free time where possible especially in Rome because there is so much to see. It would have been great to have free time to walk through Pompeii as well on our own after the guide was done. It would also be great to stop at a few more places along the way such as the Monte Cassino memorial and the catacombs as we did when we took the Best of Italy tour 18 years ago. Our last suggestion would be try and have more authentic Italian food in the included dinners rather than having them make more generic North American food such as turkey and fries. I'm sure they could have made arancini, pasta, polenta, porchetta, cannolis and other cost effective Italian food at a similar cost. We would have preferred to try more local foods from each area we visited. Hope this feedback helps!