5-Day Italy Trip: Florence, Pisa and Venice

Very hospitable travel arrangements. Allows you to explore Italy at your own pace. Highly recommended.

You went above and beyond for our trip. This included getting us to and from accomodations. This would have incurred the other costs that would have made this trip unaffordable. The hotels on the three star were super. Why pay for four star.

Although it was 5 days, 2 days were free / some travelling, so i felt we missed a little. After saying that, the hotels were all good and we were looked after - it was nice that al the planning was done for us using local knowledge.

Good tour: customers need further user-friendly information about train tickets: the fact that the voucher IS a train ticket (no need to collect them at station) and that seats have been reserved on the train.

The trip was great and satisfactory.
The choice of hotels was excellent i.e. close to other attractions. Impressed with the pick up services at hotels and stations, regardless of the short distance to the next destinations (which could be done independently).
Nevertheless, we are unhappy with the tourist guide's service for the Pisa trip (depart from Florence). The service was first handled by a trainee (who basically not ready for the job) but always interrupted by the other guide. Due to this, some information was repeated. Unpleasant and unprofessional. Should avoid training a trainee in a trip like this. Also, we'd like to advise trips to be planed in the morning and not in the afternoon.

Very Good.

First know this you won't be with the same group of people for 5 days on this tour. For us, this was a plus. You go to Florence with a busload of people that are daytripping there from Rome, stay in Florence and go to to Pisa the next day again, with a day trip group. You then take the train from Florence to Venice on your own as well transfers provided from Hotel in Florence to Hotel in Venice. Then, you take a 2 hour tour of St. Marks Square in Venice. You need to book some other tours in Venice as just seeing St. Marks Square doesn't cover that amazing city by far. We flew into Rome, stayed there for 5 days and then took this tour so it worked out very well. The hotels are basic -- clean, friendly staffs and in good neighborhoods - don't expect anything fancy. This is a very easy way to see these cities and I would highly recommend taking this tour!

The food included in the tour was disappointed. The restaurants you choose could be the best complement to the guided tours trough the cities. And it is Italy, Italian food is one of the best in the world.

The tour guide up to Florence and the local Florence guide were hard to understand and we felt rushed. The area around the statue of David was so crowded, we could not hear or understand most of what the guide was saying. Our lunch was pleasant and the shopping is great. The hotel in Florence and Venice were clean, comfortable, and the staff pleasant and helpful. Our local guide in Pisa was young and fun and shared many interesting "curiosities" and fun stories. If you want to go up in the Leaning Tower, you have to book that ahead of time. We were not told this until we were there. Though trains/stations in Italy are easy enough to get around, you will have to figure out what you are doing on your own as no one from the tour is there to help you. The itinerary said someone would meet us at the Venice train station, but there was no one. Luckily we were very near the hotel and locals were nice enough to point us in the right direction. Our local gude in Venice was interesting. It was definitely worth going in the morning as it is very crowded by around noon. A free trip to the Murano glass factory was included and definitely worth the trip. Excellent show of working with glass by master George and our guide was fun and shared many interesting things with our group.

The Good:Got a free transfer from our hotel in Rome to get to the meeting point to go to Florence (not part of the tour, but a nice surprise)
Great hotel in Venice. Were met at the Venice Train Station and taken to our hotel (a short ways away)
Great organized transportation
Good Day tours for each city with educated, professional guides
Skip the line entrance for the tours was great

The Bad: Very poor communication when starting the tour (no one knew what hotel we were staying in, in Florence when we departed Rome...made enjoying day one of the tour a little hard). The hotel in Florence was terrible (despite selecting the 4 star option)
The descriptions of your day to day activities needs refining (schedules were not kept and things were included that were not described...so I wasted some money pre booking some museum entrances). 2 of 3 Tours in English and Spanish...took a long time to learn about what we were looking at.

Overall a good tour package, but I am sure you could arrange this yourself with a better hotel in Florence and less worry about where you are going to sleep at night.

I personally did not like the fact that in every place we had a different tour agency and agent. We spent too much time moving from one place to the other to get to the departing point to start the trip. I don't see the value of arriving in Rome when you don't include a Rome visit so it is a waste of time.
In Venice, to get to the meeting point from the hotel was impossible because they don't tell you how to get to that point and none comes to pick you up.
The tour includes too much free time instead of taking you to more interesting attractions. I could have done this trip by myself.

The lapse in organisation in Florence was not acceptable and created a very poor perception . The taxi to take us from the hotel to the station never arrived , there was no communication or explanation. Were it not for the super effort of the staff at the hotel , we would have missed the train to Venice . The rest of the trip was ok but we found some of the tour guides fell short of a good mark .

Be very careful when considering this tour / trip. We selected the 5 day - 4 star Superior room option. The room in Florence was very nice - the room in Venice was the worst we have ever stayed in, in our life. It was a 1 star at best. It was tiny, the bed was 5 foot long - the AC barley trickled out the first day and was off upon our return the 2nd day - the room was always very, very hot. The room was dirty, the floors had not been swept for sometime. The bathroom was worse. We asked for a different room and was told no. We did finally get a fan which was noisy but helped a little. THE WAS WRONG. This package is not a value and not good at all. When I e-mailed the agency they said nothing could be done. I question Viator as a provider and would caution all to consider other options.

Florence was nice, hotel we were sent to in taxi after the 1st day was a disappointment! 4 Star? NO! Service and staff was lacking! Expected more. The shuttle to pick us up never showed up, we had to walk to train station to catch train on to Venice. Arrived in Venice and met by a snippy agent, who didn't hardly spoke while taking us by foot to the hotel---only to find out there wasNO water at our hotel and we were taken to another hotel. PUT IN A ROOM INSIDE COURTYARD WITH ABSOLUTELY NO VIEW OF VENICE!! Ridiculus. NEVER AGAIN!!