Food & Wine Tours and Vacations

We had a fantastic trip, all thanks to our travel specialist. We spent a few days in Siena, touring different Tuscan towns like Montepulciano, Pienza, and San Gimignano, and then we spent a couple of nights in Florence. All of our drivers and guides were very thoughtful that we had my two-year-old nephew with us.

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 had a lovely tour of Sicily and we thoroughly enjoyed the scenic villages, mountains and coastal areas, the delicious food, the history and culture of the region, and, of course, the many lovely Sicilians we met on our journey! This was made possible by the travel company we went with when we first engaged Zicasso. They met with us (online) and developed a great tour, for which a few highlights are summarized below. They were also very helpful during the trip to offer us assistance if we needed it. In short, they made our trip truly memorable!

On our visit to Palermo, we experienced its ancient history and fine cuisine. Touring some of the smaller towns and villages, such as Cefalù, Modica, Scicli, Marzamemi and Noto, we enjoyed many scenic streets and alleys with their many shops and restaurants, and also seeing some beautiful artwork in their ancient cathedrals. The countryside of Sicily is also lovely to see and on our tour, we were privileged to visit some farms and talk with some locals who make their living off the land.

We were captivated by the rich historical underpinnings of Sicily, as we saw when we toured Agrigento to visit the Valley of the Temples. In other larger towns/cities we visited, such as Ragusa, Syracuse and Taormina, we had many opportunities to tour food markets and taste (and to learn to prepare) some specialty dishes of the local area.

Having a walking tour around Mount Etna with a local guide provided us with a refreshing outdoor nature hike that was a great way to learn about the area. Capping off our nature walk with a gastro/wine tour at a local winery was a great finale to our two-week vacation! In the end, our only regret was that we didn't want the vacation to end!

I didn't understand the relationship between Zicasso and its travel company, and it took me a while to get the triangular reporting scheme. It was easier for me to reach out to someone directly, but we managed.

The people at the travel company were very accommodating. However, I learned a lot about my own travel preferences through this trip. We spent four days in Porto, the first being arrival from the US via Lisbon, so we did not do any touring that day. We only had half a day to explore on our own given the activities that were planned for us. I would like to have had more downtime in Porto to get to know the city.

The foodie tour that we took was fabulous. Our guide took us on a very personal tour, introducing us to her favorites and including all the things we wanted to achieve. Please send her our regards and personal thanks.

We spent a day in Vinho Verde. As the harvest had been completed the day before we arrived, the experience felt contrived. We could easily have skipped this.

The Douro Valley exploration was more interesting to us. We visited two wineries, the second of which was more special, so we enjoyed the tasting more thoroughly. Again, the guide was delightful!

We took a train back to Lisbon feeling like we had missed much of Porto. As we expressed interest in Jewish history, we booked our first morning tour through a tour booking platform to supplement what the travel company provided. While they said their guides would be knowledgeable in this area, there was no guide that provided that background.

Our train ride to Lisbon ended in a surprise. We were about to descend the stairs to the Oriente platform when the doors closed suddenly and the train left. Fortunately, the next stop was not far and we were able to turn ourselves around and return to our awaiting driver.

Our day in Sintra and Cascais was disappointing. We drove to Cascais and had 25 minutes to explore. We then continued to Sintra. We were not sure what access we were provided, but another couple had full access and their admittance was for 12:00, so we had to be there by then. While it is a spectacular site, it was way too crowded to see anything, and a guided tour of the site would have been desirable.

We were able to include a visit to an estate due to a working relationship that exists with them. They have cork forests on their property, so there was no reason to visit Évora for that purpose.

All in all, the drivers and guides we were given were thoughtful, professional, helpful, and concerned… always helping us with doors, luggage, footing. Having them immediately available was extremely useful. On the other hand, we learned that we were not as interested in camp for adults, where all of our activities were planned for us, as we were in learning and feeling the culture and spirit of the country. The country is beautiful and its people quite warm and friendly.

Special thanks to our travel coordinator for picking up the pieces of our trip and finalizing the details for us.

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).

Overall, the trip was perfect! The hotels were really nice and the itinerary was great.

A few things I would have changed. First, the Amalfi tour day. There was not enough time in Ravello or Positano. We needed more time to relax and shop.

The class of train could have been nicer for the Florence-to-Rome portion of the trip.

We've been to many wineries throughout Europe and the one we went to on our way to Siena was okay, but we have been to much nicer wineries, with better wine and food tastings. It was not a great wine tour experience.

Everything else was wonderful and we really enjoyed the trip with our sons!!!

Thank you!