Italy Trip Review: Mother & Son 10-Night Vacation, Siena, San Gimignano, Cinque Terre, Monterosso, Venice, Florence

Overall, I think our travel company did a very good job planning our trip. We did have some hiccups along the way but we were able to resolve mostly on our own though. 

A summary:

1) There were problems making the final payment for the trip. We went back and forth a few times before the invoice was correct. This was concerning. 
2) I didn't receive the vouchers and final itinerary until the weekend before we were set to travel. An earlier email from months ago which indicated I would receive it within 7-10 days before our departure. I was able to speak with Rose to iron out a few corrections the night before, but I don't enjoy last-minute things like this. This also made it a little bit challenging to plan around the scheduled trips because we didn't have all the start/end times so purchasing tickets in advance for museums, etc. made it hard. 
3) I had agreed in an email that we wanted to venture to Siena and San Gimignano but a small group tour was never arranged. While I take some responsibility for this because I didn't read the itinerary carefully to see that it said, "Tour suggestion - visit of Siena & San G..." it was strange that I wasn't asked if we wanted a tour arranged especially because we had other tours booked for us so why not this one? 

4) Our Cinque Terre tour almost didn't happen because I didn't want to take a car to the LA SPEZIA CENTRALE TRAIN STATION because I had gotten car sick the day before traveling the windy roads. We were able to figure out that we could get to the Centrale station right from the Monterosso train station in just a few minutes. I had emailed the help desk and no one told me that we could do this. The attendant at the hotel wasn't very cooperative the first day we were there and she also didn't speak English very well. Through the magic of the internet, we figured it out though. 

4) We were able to avert disaster on our last day in Venice when our small group tour never materialized. We went to the designated meeting place in advance as instructed but no one was there. I emailed the helpdesk immediately and I was told they were looking into it. I was asked for my cell number (which I had provided before our trip because I was asked to) which I promptly provided again, but no one responded to me so we walked to a tour site we had seen the day before to try and get tickets for a boat tour only to find out that they were not available that day. I cried because I didn't think we'd have a chance to tour the city and that would have been a huge disappointment. After I composed myself, I sent another email (at least 25-30 minutes had elapsed) to Mario asking what the status was and that's when he finally called me. He did offer us a private tour with a guide (who was wonderful) in the late afternoon so we were very grateful for that. 

5) I understand that it was due to COVID, but I was disappointed that we got bumped from our original hotel in Monterosso. The other hotel grew on us but initially, we felt very isolated and the front desk attendant wasn't very friendly at first. Also, the taxi cab rides up and down the windy mountain were harrowing but did make for some good laughs!

5) I had trouble using the emergency number. Each voucher page indicated the Helpdesk number but when I dialed it, I heard a recorded message saying that I either entered the number wrong or that no one was available. I confirmed that the number I dialed was correct but still had a problem. Mario had texted me the number omitting the 001 and when I tapped on the number from the text, it went right through to the help desk. If I wasn't supposed to dial the 001 while in Italy, then the vouchers shouldn't have included the 001 or they could have indicated that when in Italy, the 001 isn't needed. Please don't make assumptions that everyone knows that that is for use in the US only. This was also very stressful and had it been an emergency, it could have been even worse. 

6) Having the land travel and flight desk as two separate entities was sometimes a challenge. It might have been easier to just have one agent do it all but I understand that this may not be feasible. My Zicasso liaison was helpful and I did communicate some of my concerns to her shortly after my trip was booked.