Hi,

How are the dinner optionals on the budget Best of Italy tour? I notice that 3 of the 4 optionals are dinners in Rome. We prefer "sightseeing" so if we miss the $80 CAD dinners, would we be able to do any "sightseeing" or eating out on our own? Has anyone stayed at the Pineta Palace? How is it? We are wondering which optionals to take? thanks

Hi! I did not take your particular tour but I can help you with a couple things. Our tour was in Rome for 2 nights, and we were offered the Rome at Night dinner, the Castelli Romani dinner, and the Sistine Chapel/Vatican Museum excursions. The Castelli Romani dinner was cancelled for us due to lack of interest. I LOVED the Rome at Night dinner. It is expensive, but not only is it a very good dinner, but there is a lot of sightseeing included. We first went to the Trevi Fountain for about 20 minutes, which is amazing!! We also drove past most of the major sights, the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Circus Maximus, Caesars Palace, St Peters Cathedral, Caesar's tomb, and several other sights. It's really amazing to see Rome at night, it's beautiful. Many of these sights aren't really worth going out of your way to visit with so little time, like the Circus Maximus, but since they're included in the bus tour, it's great to see them (but that's if your night tour is the same as ours was, which I'm not positive). .

I can't say anything about the Castelli Romani dinner or the Tivoli dinner, but I would definitely consider the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum tour. It is also very expensive, and I don't think it would be too hard to do it on your own, since, as it was for our group, everybody on the tour whether they were doing the excursion or not, were dropped off at the same place. The only difference would be that you wouldn't have a tour guide, and the line to get in without a tour group may be a lot longer. Our tour also included St. Peters Cathedral. If you didn't do the excursion, everything on the itinerary is still totally must-see!

We stayed at the Pineta Palace, which other than being a clean, standard hotel room is not exactly a palace. Just expect a functional hotel, that's what you will get.

The hotel is located outside "downtown" Rome, it's located more in the suburbs. There's no sightseeing nearby, though there are some restaurants and such. To go out sightseeing on your own, you'd need to get a cab or take the bus, there is a bus depot nearby the hotel. We took a hotel shuttle bus back to the hotel from near the Castel St. Angelo at about 8pm, I think that was a regular hotel shuttle but I'm not totally positive, but you can ask the hotel about that, it's much more convenient and cheap than a taxi. I think it was 4 euros. I hope this helps! Have a fantastic trip!!

thanks for the info, yes we want to see the Sistine Chapel for sure and probably do the Rome at night dinner since you mention there is lots of sightseeing included. I've seen quite a few negative reviews for the Pineta Palace hotel.. . hopefully our room won't be too bad, as long as they have showers in the rooms.

I didnt mind the hotel, I would say that it was probably the least nice of all of our hotels, but there was nothing wrong with it. They do have showers, though I remember it wasn't uncommon for shower water to end up all over the floor. But the room was relatively big and they had very large balconies, which I always appreciate.

But yeah, if your night tour is anything like ours was, which it should be, you'll be able to take in many if not most of the major sights. I think the touring portion of the dinner was at least an hour and a half, probably more. I think the only major sights we didn't pass by on our tour that I can think of were the Spanish Steps and the Pantheon. Personally, it was most definitely tied for my favorite excursion of the whole trip with the Paris farewell dinner, because of all the included sightseeing, not to mention they were very good dinners as well.

Hi,

So the shower water went all over the floor? That reminds me of the hotel I had in Paris, very small shower stall and the shower curtain was so flimsy it didn't really help. Do you remember if the dinner optionals are late night dinners in Italy? What time would you get back to the hotel afterwards? How many did you have in your bus? Is there adequate leg room for tall folks? Also, cosmos seems to have a smaller size of carry-on bag allowed now. If you bring a bigger bag, would it fit on the bus or not?

With the exception of only a couple optionals, surprisingly few people went on most of them on our tour. Of the 39 people on our tour, I would say no more than 20 went on the Rome at Night excursion. I can't exactly remember what time it was at, but I would say we left the hotel around 6 and got back I think around 10. Our bus wasn't completely full, but there weren't any free rows. I had 2 seats to myself since I was traveling alone, and I would say there isn't tons of leg room, but a couple of the seats have more, like the seats in the very front and the ones behind the exit in the back. It seemed fairly standard for a coach. I was pretty comfortable sitting forward and I'm 5'10". .

Our tour guide didn't seem to be strict about carry on bags. I think they are stricter about your suitcase because the porters have to carry them around. I suppose it depends on the TD, but as long as there's room, I didn't see a problem. There's storage above the seats, as well as room on the floor and under the seats.

Yeah, it was a flimsy curtain situation in our room. It wasn't a huge deal, but every time somebody took a shower the floor was soaked. And the toilet was situated oddly under the gigantic sink. It was all an adventure!

Tofurkey38, the dinner optionals include drinks, liquors, etc.. . if one of us doesn't drink at all, would there be any nonalcoholic drinks offered instead? Also, how was the hotel food on your tour? What were the meals like in Italy?

Yeah, most of the optional dinners I think include a drink. On the Rome at Night dinner, you could choose from beer or wine but they also had water available and they came around with cans of pop if you'd rather have that. I don't drink either, I usually just had coke or water.

As far as the included meals go, as I remember those we had in Italy were pretty good. In Venice, our included dinner was actually at a restaurant in the mainland town which was very good. We didn't have any included dinners in Rome. In Sorrento our dinner was in the hotel restaurant and was similar, I'm a vegetarian so I had a cheese pizza but I remember everybody else had a choice for their main course and starter. With some of them, everybody gets the same thing, others there is a choice between 2 things. We also had a dinner in Florence in the hotel restaurant which was similar. Most of them started with something like a bowl of pasta and tomato sauce, the main course was like some kind of meat and vegetables, and the dessert was like a little scoop of ice cream or piece of cake.

They aren't the fanciest or maybe the most authentic meals, but I was pleasantly surprised with the quality. You don't get free drinks with most of the included meals, usually you even have to pay for water. Bring about 3-4 euros extra with you, more if you want alchoholic drinks.

We just returned from our Italy tour. Lake Maggiore was beautiful. We did 11 out of 14 optionals. The dinner & scenery on Pescatori Island was amazing. Really enjoyed the gondala ride, great for picture taking too. Burano was so colorful. The Sorrento flavours dinner was really tasty. The Capri island tour was so scenic. The Rome farewell dinner was well worth it, many delicious dishes came, excellent flutist and guitar player with amazing voices. The Vatican museum & sistine chapel is a must see.