Europe Travel Guide

We had an absolute dream trip to Italy with the help of Zicasso's travel specialist! Traveling as a family of five, we visited Rome, Florence, San Gimignano, Greve, Siena, Cinque Terre, and Venice, along with many beautiful towns and smaller areas throughout the country.

The wonderful vacation rental accommodations were thoughtfully chosen and every detail of our trip was carefully planned. The local tour guides were incredibly knowledgeable and gave us a truly authentic experience. Our private transfers, train transfer, and private tours were efficient, informative, and made traveling from place to place seamless and stress-free.

The communication between all tour guides and transportation providers was great, as was that of each vacation rental host, who contacted us in advance to prepare us for our arrival.

One of our favorite parts of the trip was discovering the smaller, less-touristy areas within the larger cities, places we likely never would have found on our own. We enjoyed exploring Tridente for shopping and Trastevere in Rome for a private pizza-making class (highly recommended), artisan shops, excellent restaurants, and a vibrant nightlife.

Florence was wonderful, but we had the opportunity to travel to a few other areas, such as Siena, Greve, and San Gimignano. We even had a private vineyard tour and chef's meal while in Chianti. A must-see is the walk to the Boboli Gardens across Ponte Vecchio and, on the way back to our apartment, a stop at Piazzale Michelangelo.

While staying in Cinque Terre (Monterosso al Mare), be sure to take a private boat to visit all of the other villages and maybe even snorkel. The water is so clear!

Venice had great history, but we also enjoyed our boat tour to Murano to watch the glassmaking process and Burano, filled with gorgeous multicolored homes and artisan shops.

Every experience felt personal, meaningful, and special.

This trip was truly an absolute dream and we are so grateful to him for helping make our family vacation to Italy unforgettable. We highly recommend him to anyone looking to plan an incredible, seamless, and memorable trip!

We received excellent planning and follow-through during our trip from Zicasso's travel specialist.

The whole experience was amazing. From the start of planning our trip to getting home, the communication was clear and helpful, the experiences were more than we could have hoped for, and it was truly a dream vacation. I couldn’t have done this on my own, and throughout the trip, I was so thankful.

The logistics of getting us around southwest Italy to Capri, Positano, and Sorrento went so smoothly, thanks to the services provided by Zicasso's travel specialist and another travel specialist of Zicasso's travel company. We began and ended our trip by flying in and out of Naples.

The guides, drivers, and staff of the hotels they arranged for us could not have been more friendly and accommodating. We were particularly impressed by the warm reception and overall service we received at our hotel in Capri. We were treated like family. We plan to return to Capri in 2028 and stay at that same hotel.

In addition to the quality of the service we received overall, we found the scenery in each area to be beautiful, lush, and green. They arranged several moderate-level guided hikes for us, one in the vicinity of each city we visited, and the countryside in each place was gorgeous. Each of our guides was very friendly, enthusiastic, and knowledgeable about the area we were hiking in.

Of course, the food everywhere we went was fantastic!

One unexpected bonus: At our hotel in Positano, completely serendipitously, I got to meet and chat with one of my favorite actors and his wife.

If I were to take the trip again, the one thing I would do differently would be to stay at a hotel other than our hotel in Naples the night prior to our departure flight back to the US. The room and services of the hotel staff were fine, but the hotel premises were in a hard-to-get-to location, on the second or third floor of an old building that did not have a reliable elevator. We had to drag our luggage up some long flights of stairs to get to the hotel lobby and rooms. There was also some false advertising by the hotel itself, in that the photo of the hotel we saw prior to our trip, which was represented as being the front of the hotel, was actually one side of the building that housed the hotel. The actual entrance of the building, which had to be used to get upstairs to the floor housing the hotel, was pretty sketchy-looking: dirty, dingy, and with that rickety-looking elevator we were afraid to use.

I want to share that my family and I had a wonderful two-week vacation in Greece, during which we went island hopping and explored Athens.

Our accommodations were excellent, with great staff and environments, and they were in great locations. There were daily updates via text regarding our itinerary, with any changes, which I greatly appreciated. There was someone available daily if there were any questions or concerns that came up. The entire process of planning the trip was so great and I got everything that I wanted from this trip.

I highly recommend this company to anyone who wants a memorable trip to Greece!

I'm back at home after a wonderful vacation in Spain. Zicasso's travel specialist did a wonderful job arranging everything! It all went smoothly (aside from how long it took for our baggage to show up when we arrived, which made finding our first driver tricky).

The hotels were very nice and I liked how easy it was for us to walk to great food, shopping, and sights from each hotel. All the tours were informative, with very pleasant guides. I'm very excited about having the Basque cheesecake recipe after our cooking class. Other highlights were the Guggenheim Museum, front-row seats at the flamenco show, and all things Gaudí in Barcelona. I wish I were still there.

Thank you again for facilitating great memories!