Contiki Guided Tour through Italy

I am still catching up on my blog…where was I…oh, so…I had taken Julia and Nicole to Rome airport and said good-bye to them. Now, I had two more lovely days in my wonderful little country apartment in Tocchi and then I had to get back to Rome myself to start the 2 week guided tour with Contiki.

Let me explain a little something first…I booked my 2-week tour about one week after I arrived in Siena. At the time, 2 weeks in a bus, with other tourists seemed like a good idea. But, my thoughts on that changed in the past two months and I desperately tried to change the tour from 2 weeks to one week…and also to save the money that was quickly dwindling. Well, I couldn’t change or get a refund, so…

Overall, the Contiki tour was a good way to maximize traveling time and see a lot of places. In two weeks, I visited: Rome, Pompei (Naples), Sorrento, Capri, Florence, Chianti Region, Pisa, Verona, Milan, and Venice. Whew! Every morning a 7 am wake up call. And overall, the food and choice of restaurants (organized through Contiki) were not good. The hotels were okay and got better. Besides getting a glimpse of so many places and monuments, I would say the highlights of the trip were: having time to study my Italian on the bus (from Venice to Rome was 6 hours), the hilarious scenarios that played out that made me feel better about the terrible food and of course the people I met on the tour. Marco, the tour manager was awesome. So that’s a snapshot of my thoughts on Contiki. Read on for more details of funny stories…