Jess_S
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- May 14, 2015
Hi everyone,
This is my trip report for the July 4, 2023 Viva Italia (Rome, Tuscany, Venice) Trip. On this trip, I travelled with my husband, D, and my son, P, who is now 10. I apologize in advance because I am sure that it is going to take me forever to finish this report. Please feel free to ask questions in the meantime.
In my prior trip report, I made the mistake of saving my overall impressions for the end. This time, I'm starting with overall impressions. The day-by-day portions of the report will include the good, the bad, and the ugly for each day. Here we are:
About the Trip
Why ABD for Italy? Two words. Heat and crowds. Because Italy is hot and crowded in the summer, I knew that pre-booking major sights would be essential. The tourist who decides they are going to just drop-in on the Vatican when the whim strikes finds themselves in a long line – or worse – turned away. Given that reality, I knew that our trip would be fairly structured regardless of whether we went on our own or with a group. So, I decided to let someone else handle all the planning and logistics for our trip.
Prior Experience with ABD – Scotland 2018
This was our second trip with ABD. We visited Scotland with ABD in 2018 when P was almost 6. In my trip report for that trip, my big picture review of ABD was that it was an option that we would consider for future travel but only for the right trip. I liked having someone else be the “mom” for our family, handling the logistics and carrying the items (snacks, water, first aid kit) that I would usually carry. The trip included activities that we would not have tried and locations we would not have visited on our own that became trip highlights. And the guides (two adventure guides who travel with you, along with local guides at each destination) were wonderful with children. However, I was really surprised that – despite billing itself as a family travel company – ABD attracts very few families with young children. Most of the “kids” on our trip were older teens or young adults. P was the youngest traveler on the trip by several years and there were only 2 other children under the age of 13 (a pair of 10-year-olds).
The biggest negative for us was the pace of the trip. We generally like to take our time and enjoy sights at a leisurely pace. ABD often packed multiple big-ticket sights into a single day, which meant that our time at each place was very limited. For that reason, I decided that we would only use ABD again where we felt the benefits of using a tour company outweighed this negative. Using ABD to visit Italy in July passed that test. There wasn’t going to be any lingering in a packed Coliseum or Vatican Museum, so we weren’t given anything up by travelling with ABD – only gaining benefits.
Impressions of ABD Italy Trip
Italy in July is brutally hot – hot enough that it brought more than one person in our group to tears. (Yes, I was one of them). If you can travel in the shoulder season, you absolutely should. But, if you must travel to Italy in the summer, ABD is a great way to do it. At most of the attractions we visited in Rome, Florence, and Venice, we walked past long lines of tourists waiting in the hot sun and were immediately admitted via a separate entrance for pre-booked groups. The exception was the Vatican and that’s because we visited the Vatican museums 2 hours before they opened, so no line had formed when we entered the museums. Between the heat and crowds, I would have been overwhelmed coordinating tickets and finding the correct entrances for sights; I really appreciated having someone else in charge.
This is my trip report for the July 4, 2023 Viva Italia (Rome, Tuscany, Venice) Trip. On this trip, I travelled with my husband, D, and my son, P, who is now 10. I apologize in advance because I am sure that it is going to take me forever to finish this report. Please feel free to ask questions in the meantime.
In my prior trip report, I made the mistake of saving my overall impressions for the end. This time, I'm starting with overall impressions. The day-by-day portions of the report will include the good, the bad, and the ugly for each day. Here we are:
About the Trip
Why ABD for Italy? Two words. Heat and crowds. Because Italy is hot and crowded in the summer, I knew that pre-booking major sights would be essential. The tourist who decides they are going to just drop-in on the Vatican when the whim strikes finds themselves in a long line – or worse – turned away. Given that reality, I knew that our trip would be fairly structured regardless of whether we went on our own or with a group. So, I decided to let someone else handle all the planning and logistics for our trip.
Prior Experience with ABD – Scotland 2018
This was our second trip with ABD. We visited Scotland with ABD in 2018 when P was almost 6. In my trip report for that trip, my big picture review of ABD was that it was an option that we would consider for future travel but only for the right trip. I liked having someone else be the “mom” for our family, handling the logistics and carrying the items (snacks, water, first aid kit) that I would usually carry. The trip included activities that we would not have tried and locations we would not have visited on our own that became trip highlights. And the guides (two adventure guides who travel with you, along with local guides at each destination) were wonderful with children. However, I was really surprised that – despite billing itself as a family travel company – ABD attracts very few families with young children. Most of the “kids” on our trip were older teens or young adults. P was the youngest traveler on the trip by several years and there were only 2 other children under the age of 13 (a pair of 10-year-olds).
The biggest negative for us was the pace of the trip. We generally like to take our time and enjoy sights at a leisurely pace. ABD often packed multiple big-ticket sights into a single day, which meant that our time at each place was very limited. For that reason, I decided that we would only use ABD again where we felt the benefits of using a tour company outweighed this negative. Using ABD to visit Italy in July passed that test. There wasn’t going to be any lingering in a packed Coliseum or Vatican Museum, so we weren’t given anything up by travelling with ABD – only gaining benefits.
Impressions of ABD Italy Trip
Italy in July is brutally hot – hot enough that it brought more than one person in our group to tears. (Yes, I was one of them). If you can travel in the shoulder season, you absolutely should. But, if you must travel to Italy in the summer, ABD is a great way to do it. At most of the attractions we visited in Rome, Florence, and Venice, we walked past long lines of tourists waiting in the hot sun and were immediately admitted via a separate entrance for pre-booked groups. The exception was the Vatican and that’s because we visited the Vatican museums 2 hours before they opened, so no line had formed when we entered the museums. Between the heat and crowds, I would have been overwhelmed coordinating tickets and finding the correct entrances for sights; I really appreciated having someone else in charge.
- Itinerary: I thought the itinerary for this trip was well-balanced with a good mix of seeing marquee attractions in major cities, relaxing in the countryside, and doing hands-on activities like mask making. Just like with Scotland, several of the trip highlights – pasta making on the farm, the pirate cruise in Venice, etc. – were not things that I would have booked on my own.
- Adventure Guides: Our adventure guides, Gabby and Massi, were a great team. They were wonderful with P, ensuring that he had fun despite his total lack of interest in Italian history or culture. And they made everything run smoothly in a friendly and unobtrusive way. (For example, when I got heat exhaustion in Venice, Gabby could tell something was wrong and checked in with me. But when I told her that I didn’t need help and just wanted to sit the activity out with my head down, she didn’t push or argue).
- Fellow Adventurers: We had 42 people in our group. I did not find the group size to be a problem on this trip. At many of the attractions, we were broken into two or three smaller groups – each with its own local guide. And when we were in a larger group for walking tours, we were in such a sea of people that the size of our tour group was irrelevant. Most families on the trip were parents traveling with their teen or college-age children. There were 3 kids under 13 in our group, P (10) and two brothers (12 and 9ish) and two adult only groups (a couple and an adult daughter with her mom). Everyone in the group was friendly and respectful of their fellow travelers. For example, no one was ever late for our meetups. My son and I are shy with new people – something that has gotten worse since the pandemic. That meant that we were probably the least friendly and outgoing people on the trip. But we still enjoyed chatting with other travelers from time to time and always felt welcome in the group.
- Food: I was a little worried about food because the vegetarian options on our Scotland ABD were very repetitive. The options in Italy were more varied and much tastier. Massi, who is from Tuscany, said that it has become very easy to find vegetarian and even vegan options in Italy. He felt that gluten free is still a challenge (but ABD did accommodate the person in our group with a gluten allergy).
- Accommodations: The Gran Melia in Rome and the Hotel Borgo di Cortefreda in Tuscany were both exceptional. The Gran Melia is located near the Vatican on expansive grounds that used to be the villa of Emperor Nero’s mother. It is close enough to the main tourist attractions in Rome that you can walk, but far enough away that you can get away from the hordes of other tourists. Service here was wonderful. Hotel Borgo di Cortefreda is more rustic but so charming. We had beautiful views of the countryside from our loft-style room. We did not love the Hilton Molino Stucky in Venice. It is on Guideca Island, just across from St. Mark’s Square. Views from the hotel are lovely and the rooms are updated while maintaining the historical character of the old mill from which the hotel was converted. However, the shuttle boat to the hotel has a sporadic schedule that can mean waiting as much as an hour to get to or from the main sights in Venice, something that made on-our-own sightseeing difficult in the heat. And the hotel’s beautiful pool can only be used by those with a reservation, which must be made by waiting in line at 8 am each morning. P also did not love that the hotel staff took squirt guns to the pigeons repeatedly during our stay – but maybe the pigeons appreciated the cool shower?
- Value: ABD is very expensive. However, for this itinerary, I felt that it was an acceptable value. When you add the cost of hotels (particularly the Gran Melia, which was upwards of $1200 per night this summer) and tours ($300-$500 per person for an early morning tour of the Vatican Museums), there were days where it would have cost us more to book everything in the itinerary on our own. That made the overall markup for the trip pretty reasonable, in my opinion. ABD did raise the opening price for this trip by about $1000 per person, so my math might not check out in future years, though.
- Packing Tips: Believe it or not, Italy does not have a standard plug type. They have C, F, and L outlets. We brought our Ceptics universal adaptor with the type C and F outlet plug pieces. We needed both types. The hotels in Rome and Venice used one plug type and the hotel in Tuscany used the other. (An L outlet can take a C or F plug, so we didn't bring the third type of adapter). There were 3 days where we needed to have our shoulders and knees covered to visit churches. I packed lightweight linen pants and t-shirts for that purpose. Other women in our group wore long dresses and brought a shawl to cover their shoulders.
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