Our Italy Trip

Our Italy Trip

We are back from Italy after a wonderful time! We took a guided tour of the Northern and Middle sections of Italy, traveling by coach, with our guide, Chris Beck and driver, Umberto. There were 33 of us in our group, 8 from the US and the others from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. It was a compatible and interesting group.

The tour arranged all hotel accommodations, all transportation within Italy, activities and tours each day, some meals and took care of the baggage, etc. including wake up calls! This made it very easy – no worries about any of the logistics. What a luxury! The coach was new, very comfortable with huge windows so we could see the scenery between stops.

We were off early – breakfast by 7 AM and in the coach at 8 – to try to avoid too many crowds at each stop. The number of tours and people visiting the major sights was amazing! We were sometimes just crowded into rooms like sardines and this was the off season in a slow year! We had no idea.

At some sights, we had a local tour guide. They were all very knowledgeable on their subjects and because we used audio receivers, we were always able to hear even if we were a few feet away.

Besides the tour’s basic agenda, there were a number of optional (at additional cost) excursions and we took many of them. They were all interesting.

Italy is known for its cuisine and we had several very good meals, but the downside of a tour is that we ate in restaurants that could handle parties of 30+ people. It was a set menu that featured tastes of the regional specialties. In general, the pastas and bread were excellent! When we were traveling for several hours we usually stopped for lunch at an Auto Grill – it looked like a truck stop but inside there was a wonderful deli with a buffet of warm and cold food, salad bar, fabulous breads, freshly made sandwiches which they would heat if you chose, and, of course, an espresso bar. In addition, there was a shop where you could purchase gourmet foods. We became true fans of the Auto Grills!

We saw so much in the 12 days we were on the tour that it would take pages and pages to relate it all, but below we have outlined the highlights in three sections with a slide show of photos that we hope give you a sense of the experience.

Enjoy…we sure did!