Italian Concerto Reviews

This tour of amazing Italy with its surprises around every corner was fantastic and the following comments are intended to be constructive. Leanne Duffield (our Global Journeys agent and website were A1! Tour Director - Federica - A1. Special mention here; She is so experienced, flexible, competent and lovely. Federica had to accommodate rearrangements ...read more of our schedules as there was another bus of 42 Concerto tourists and some of the places could not accommodate 84 people at once. She did this with ease, no disruptions and give us extras because of the changes. She was lovely to every one. Federica spent a lot of time on the first evening explaining Italian culture including hotel room size etc so as not to raise expectations. There were 42 or 44 on our tour (Americans, Australians and Kiwis). We all got on extremely well and on our last evening gathered to have drinks together.

Our Coach Driver was an excellent, careful driver and we felt very safe. The coach was just the best and we appreciated having Wifi. Re Gratuities - We did not know if we had pre paid these as all the other kiwis on tour had paid the gratuities when they booked their tour. It was embarrassing to find out on the last morning ours hadn't been. Federica was so nice about it (another story for another time!) The optional extras were the high lights for us and are must dos. It does make the tour much more expensive but we had budgeted for this before we left NZ. We were aware of others who just could not afford them and missed out on amazing experiences. This tour is definitely not 'at leisure'. Most days are full on and early starts. Definitely needs more time in Florence. We had just one day there. Suggest making the tour 11 days so two days in Florence.

Would recommend this tour, although you need to take the optional tours in the cities to get the most out of it. Venice was a prime example. The included tour was a visit to a glass factory and then we were taken to St Marks Square where we were left to our own devices. Not even a cruise down the grand canal unless you took an optional tour. We saw ...read more it by water bus. Hotels were good except for Venice which was poor. On the two occasions we were travelling at lunch time we managed to arrive at the peak period. It would have been easy to stop at another restaurant earlier and avoid the rush.