We just returned last night from Insight's first Easy Pace Italy tour.

It was absolutely wonderful! Three nights in each city made for lots of time to explore and discover and tour. All of our hotels were centrally located...we were right in Venice on the Grand Canal and experienced Acqua Alta first hand...the lobby of the Continental filled up with about 8 to 10 inches of water!

Our tour director, Debra D'Angelo, was outstanding and made our trip even more wonderful by her knowledge and expertise.

We did every optional but one and were totally satisfied with our experience. If this tour is really easy pace, I can't imagine how rushed the other tours are. We had activities to do every day and sometimes felt that we still didn't have enough time to see and do everything we hoped.

Debra promised us "buns of steel" when the tour was over, and yes, her promise is true...unfortunately my steel is now padded with two weeks of wonderful pasta and chocolate.

I truly hope Insight plans more Easy Pace tours as our experience was excellent and we would like to do more!

How about Easy Pace Southern Italy next?!? And Easy Pace Tuscany...and Easy Pace...well, everywhere!

Star

Thanks writing about the Easy Pace tour. I'm interested in taking one somewhere as I like the idea of spending more time in each place.

Star, please tells me the details! We may be going on this tour Dec. 30th. I'd like to know which optionals were offered especially. I'm worried that we'll see only the big cities. Was Burano offered? We may add a day to see Pompeii.
Thank you
Donna

Here's a list of the optionals and their cost:

Milan:
Leonardo Da Vinci Experience €30
Lake Como & Lugano Switzerland €42

Venice:
Gondola Serenade €30
Venice by Night €40
Venice of the Doges €33
Venice Lagoon Cruise & Dinner on Burano €62

Florence:
Pisa & Lucca €34
Dinner in the Chianti Hills €54
Uffizi Gallery €30
San Gimignano €30

Rome:
Spanish Steps & Dinner €55
Rome of the Ancient Christians - Catacombs & Moses €32
Rome by Night €24
Tivoli Gardens & Villa D'Este €39

So yes, Burano was offered, we went out there as the sun was setting and arrived as the children were all returning home from school. The little town is colourful and delightful and the food was great.

Lucca is a little town completely enclosed by an intact medieval wall. We adored rambling through the cobblestone streets and shopping our way back to the coach. The prices in the shops were considerably cheaper than the big city.

San Gimignano is a small town in the Tuscan hills. The scenery on our drive out there was incredible, we saw people harvesting the olives by hand. The sun was shining and it was exactly as you would imagine Tuscany to be. The town of San Gimignano is set on a hill with many towers. We walked around the town and it was there that I found a handmade birdhouse, made in San Gimignano, by the shopkeeper's family. This was my favourite optional by far.

Assisi is part of the tour and is another charming small town that we spent a few hours exploring.

If you do every optional you will find yourself busy almost everyday. We had one day in Venice without optionals. We had planned a busy day for ourselves but Acqua Alta and a fierce rain storm kept us indoors most of the day which was a welcome relief on Day 7 of our tour. Lots of intrepid adventurers went out anyways but we were glad for the rest.

All the included activities for the tour were great as well. It was our first time to Italy and we learned and saw so much. Debra told us that on the other tours she tells the group that they are not on holiday but on a tour and the pace is frenetic. Our pace was by no means lazy but staying 3 nights at each city made it feel more like a holiday.

Luckily I kept a daily journal or the trip would have disappeared in a blur!

Star

Thank you, thank you! Star, I appreciate this information immensely. This will be our first trip to Italy also. Our Trafalgar Best of Italy was cancelled and now I will hope that we can be switched to Easy Pace Italy. The Dec. 30th departure is quaranteed. Your writing is very descriptive, so I feel we won't be missing much with the switch. EP Italy is actually cheaper than TT BOI. That will help with adding an extra day to be sure to see Pompeii. If you can think of anything else we should know, please post again.
Thanks again
Donna

I thought that I should point out for those who are interested in taking this tour in Summer that the Easy Pace Italy (Winter Brochure, W703A) tour, although having the same name as the Summer Easy Pace Italy tour (E703A), uses totally different hotels, stays the first three nights in Milan rather than the Italian Lakes, has some differences in inclusions, one less included meal and very different prices (from $A2,125 for the Winter tour and from $A3,299 for the Summer tour).

There probably should be a separate forum for Winter brochure tours.

Phil

Going on Easy Pace Italy in Dec. Been to Italy in summer. Curious about the weather. Assume cloudy, some rain and about 30-50F. Is this about right? Rome may be sunny and warmer. Appreciate any information. Thanks in advance

Royal, Are you going on the Dec. 30th tour? I'll ditto your question about the weather. Also, Star, were most lunch stops at Auto Grills? Did you have lunch in any small towns along the way? And Phil, do you know of any services with day tours to Pompeii from Rome?
Thanks to you all
Donna

Hi Donna,

quote:

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And Phil, do you know of any services with day tours to Pompeii from Rome?

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I took a three day tour south from Rome 7 years ago that included something similar to these two tours:

• Naples, Pompeii and Sorrento tour
  
• Naples and Pompeii tour

Suggest you insert a phrase like "rome to pompeii day tour" into Google and read through the first few pages of the 55,700 hits.

By the way, from my experience from several day and half-day tours around Rome with a few different companies, don't expect the same level of quality of Tour Director as is provided by Insight. Another aspect to watch for is multi-lingual tours: many of the short tours have TDs delivering the tour commentary in several languages which is not only somewhat tedious but it actually means that you will receive less commentary in your language. This year we went down to Tivoli Gardens and Hadrians Villa on a guarantee of an English-only tour only to find it was changed at the last moment to English/Spanish/Italian. The TD was not very good and he obviously knew it because he left the coach at the first drop-off point back in Rome before anyone had tipped him.

Phil

This message has been edited. Last edited by: phil,

The weather for November was unseasonably warm on some days and rainy on others. I took a leather coat with a zip-in liner that I used on the cold days. There were even days when I didn't need a coat. I wished I had brought my zip-on hood as the wind was brutal when it was raining. I took an umbrella which we used a lot, but if you don't want to pack one, the minute a raindrop falls suddenly umbrella vendors appear out of nowhere.

We had hot and cold days in each city and though Rome was supposed to be the warmest, the day we stood in line at the Vatican for an hour and half it was raining and windy and cold. But the very next day, when we were underground in the Catacombs, the sun was shining brilliantly and the coats came off.

As for lunches, we never once had lunch in an Autogrill. We stopped twice at them for coffee breaks but we were always in a town for lunch. We stopped in Verona for lunch on our way to Venice and in Assisi on our way to Rome. We left Venice early enough to get to Florence for lunch. We had lunch in San Gimignano and Lucca as well.

Our tour director helped one couple plan a day trip to Pompeii on their extra day after the tour. She arranged transportation and a tour guide.

Hope that helps

Star