Review: Luxury Italy Family Vacation, Venice, Rome, Tuscany, Positano, Sorrento, Ischia, Pisa, Colosseum, St Mark's Square

Venice was an amazing city and our guide was superb.  The tour of St. Mark's Square, Cathedral and museum was terrific.  We enjoyed our hotel (very quiet rooms!) and its closeness to St. Mark's.  Leaving Venice, we took the high speed train to Pisa.  The trains are efficient and fast.  This is the way to travel Italy!  Our driver met us near Pisa and drove us to the town and monuments. He was an amazing driver/tour guide.  The entire family enjoyed seeing and talking to him and his insights into Italy and the Tuscany region were much appreciated.  Once we got to Pisa, he introduced us to our tour guide.  Please ask for her should you tour the Leaning Tower, Cathedral, etc.  Her love for the town of Pisa and its sites is evident and her knowledge of the history, etc. is complete.  We enjoyed the entire time we spent with her and hated to say goodbye.  Our driver picked us up at our appointed time and escorted us to our Castle/hotel in Tuscany.  The Michelin rated hotel and restaurant staff were amazing and the food was quite good.  Our driver picked us up the next morning and then took us to a winery, where we toured their wine and olive oil production facilities.  After the wine tour, we went to the main house where we were treated to a wonderful 5 course lunch, prepared by the winery owner's chef.  It was complete with a number of different wines produced on site.  This was honestly one of the best times of the trip.  We were the only ones in the family's large dining hall, except for the wine master who introduced and described each of the wines and then left, until the next course; an amazing experience!  Leaving Tuscany, we headed to Florence.  Our driver drove us again and made numerous suggestions of restaurants to go to and museums to see once we arrived.  Our hotel was one of the best; beautifully appointed and right on the square.  We spent 2 days touring and shopping Florence and got a great feel for an amazingly beautiful city.  The Uffizi Gallery is immense and not to be missed.  You could spend at least 2 days viewing the works of art, probably longer.  Leaving Florence, we headed for Rome.  Again, the train ride was fast and smoothe.  We were met at the station by our driver Franco, a wonderful and interesting Italian speaker, who gave us an insider's feel for Rome and made us feel at home, right away.  Since my son and I are Spanish speakers, we had no problem patching together what each of us was saying!  Our hotel was beautiful and the front desk staff treated us as if we were the only guests in the hotel.  Our guide met us in the afternoon and took us for a walking tour of the local monuments, including The Forum, Colosseum and surrounding sites.  She gave us a very nice feeling for the city and its history.  Later that night, we had an amazing experience at the Roman Bath Ruins at Caracalla, where we saw a live performance of the opera La Boheme.  All of us enjoyed the production, but the children especially liked the unobtrusive screens near the stage, that provided English sub-titles to the songs.  Our tour of the Vatican the following day was led by another, much above average tour guide.  She went out of her way to try and engage my shy daughter in conversation about the art and artwork that we were seeing.  Leaving Rome, we ventured to Naples and the nearby ruins at Herculaneum and Pompei.  The self-guided walking tour of Herculaneum gave us a good feel for what we would see later once we reached Pompei.  There, we had a professional guide show us the sites and the important artifacts; a very interesting place.  We continued on our trip to the town of Positano.  When we arrived, our hotel had planned rooms with beautiful views of the downtown cathedral and the bay, which was full of large pleasure boats.  A hotel/bar across the way serenaded us with live Bossa Nova music.  The day after our arrival, we took a small power boat and motored over to the island of Capri.  We landed in the main harbor and took a local bus/tram to the downtown area where we had a wonderful lunch.  Our captain was waiting for us a few hours later and took us back to the harbor in Positano.  After a couple of days, we left by ferry for the island of Ischia.  We had told our agent that my wife's family was originally from Ischia and that this was her first time to the island.  Our hotel was literally a five minute walk from the Ischia boat landing, so we pulled our baggage up to the front desk and checked in.  The staff was awaiting us and escorted us to fabulous rooms that faced onto the boat harbor.  They had champagne and freshly baked goods awaiting us as well; a very nice touch.  The restaurant staff were quite personable and attentive and we give them all (especially the maitre d') many thumb's up!  The next day, we hired a taxi to spend half of the afternoon with us and asked that they take us around the island and show us the sites where my wife's relatives had lived: we saw the local churches where her family had been baptized, we saw the church were my wife's great grandparents were married.  We were even given a private tour by a lady in charge of that church who kept apologizing that she only spoke Italian.  She was lovely and we didn't care that our Italian was as lacking as her English.  Finally, our trip ended with a boat ride back to Naples and then a plane flight to the States.  Thanks to our agent, our trip will be remembered forever.