The Best of Tuscany and Cinque Terre in 8 Days

Zicasso’s travel specialist and her team crafted a wonderful 10-day trip to Tuscany, Cinque Terre, and Florence for my husband's 60th birthday. All the hotels were beautiful boutique hotels that we probably would not have found if we were planning it ourselves. The same was true with the experiences they booked for us. They have the local connections and can provide experiences you may not easily find by searching the internet.

We loved that our wine tastings were at smaller local wineries. All our guides were very friendly and very knowledgeable. All our drivers were always on time. They took care of reserving our train tickets, as well as dinner reservations. We felt very well taken care of throughout the entire trip.

Our Zicasso travel agent did a great job planning and executing our two-week tour of Italy. Transfers were seamless and guides were knowledgeable and experienced. We particularly loved Florence, our hotel, its staff, and its walkable location to so many sites. We loved the guide in Cinque Terre; he knew the area, specifically a restaurant where we were away from the crowds. Thanks to the travel agent for a job well done.

Zicasso’s travel company and every single guide and driver were stellar. All four hotels were good or excellent. There was one error on the schedule for the day outside of Florence when we had a driver to take us to the Siena region. The schedule stated three hours, so we paid for tickets to the Pitti Palace/garden, which turned out to be wasted money as the driving tour was actually nine hours. It was a beautiful day, though.

Most of the arrangements were fine, but as we've used Zicasso several times in the past, I was disappointed that the day trip on June 2nd to Spoleto and Perugia was on a national holiday. Nothing was open, and so we spent a lot of money, drove a long way just to have lunch in Spoleto. We spent 30 minutes in Perugia and did not use anywhere near the 9 hours we were paying for.

Also on Sunday, May 31st, the trip to Cinque Terre was not good planning. I told you when we started our discussions that I walked with a cane. The distance to and from the train stations in each of the cities was quite extensive so we only ended up in 3 towns. Again, we did not use anywhere near the 10 hours allotted for the tour.

In summary, I rely on your expertise of the area to guide us as to what to expect in the different destinations. We could have switched the days for Spoleto and Perugia, to avoid the holiday and could have tailored the Cinque Terre in other ways. I thought we were paying for a private excursion so I wouldn't have to do so much walking.

Again, my husband and I felt that the 2 days of private tours were money not well spent.

The transfers in all locations were excellent and the travel agent was delightful (although she did not give us the name and phone number of our drivers the day before, as was stated on our itinerary from the travel specialist).

All in all, we had a wonderful trip to Italy but feel some more personalized attention should have been paid to our specific needs, as this was a costly trip for 7 days.

This travel company was incredibly difficult to work with, and I would not recommend them. The travel agent seemed very annoyed when we asked basic questions about our itinerary. For example, the itinerary he sent us did not have the correct number of rooms booked for our party. When I asked him about it, he rudely told me, "Of course I have booked the right rooms". Later, we found out he was working off the wrong itinerary - our final invoice was based on this wrong itinerary and had a much higher amount than we actually owed. When we pointed that out, he went from being annoyed to flat out rude.

We also identified many gaps in transportation and logistics, with the travel agent continuing to be rude when we asked for clarification or support in fixing the gaps. For example, he had us driving a rental car to the Bologna airport at around 3 AM from rural Italy to make an 8 AM flight. We would be driving right through Florence on the way to Bologna. When I asked why we didn't simply take a later flight out of Florence, I was told there were no options to do this. A simple Google search identified several flights out of Florence at a more reasonable time.

We finally had Zicasso step in, and they were incredibly helpful in cleaning up our itinerary. Unfortunately, we still experienced several logistical issues during our trip despite Zicasso's support. For example, we were dropped off by drivers at train stations and were then on our own to figure out how to get to our hotels - all required lengthy walks up hills to access, and my 81-year old father was not able to do that. So we had to find our own transportation or have my dad attempt to walk (not good at all). As another example, my father really wanted to see the Matterhorn. The travel agent said it was an easy "day trip" from our hotel to the Matterhorn. It turned out to be a 3.5 hour drive each way. The driver left us at a train station below Zermatt (town below the mountain) to figure out on our own how to navigate the city of Zermatt. We had no guidance from the travel agency on how to best see the Matterhorn, and Zermatt was another town with steep hills that my dad had to walk through (with a cane) as we tried to figure out how to best see the mountain. Due to the length of the drive to Zermatt from our hotel, we had less than two hours in Zermatt because the travel company had booked us on a 6:15 AM train the next morning to leave Switzerland. It was a wasted day instead of being the wonderful experience my father had hoped for.

The best part of the trip was the hotels, and the travel company gets credit for selecting hotels with wonderful views and great breakfast options. They were not easily accessible from the local towns, so we had to figure out taxis and shuttles to get to nearby sites.

Most of the time, we were left on our own to find our way around. But we did have a guided tour in Florence and a knowledgeable driver that took us to a winery in Tuscany. Both of these guides were amazing, and it would have been nice to have more guided support throughout this trip (especially in Zermatt).