Travel Review: Italy Honeymoon. Venice, Florence, Rome, Positano, Siena, Chianti, Colosseum, Vatican, Sistine Chapel, Cooking Class

Overall, the experience was great.  The travel company and our coordinator was easy to communicate with and very responsive to emails and easily able to schedule a phone call if necessary.  

As we planned the trip, she was able to adapt and make changes to the itinerary to meet our budget.

We were happy that we selected a travel company to plan our honeymoon since we were very busy planning a wedding and we did not have to worry about making detailed travel plans.   

We were delighted with the hotel selections that were made for us and most of the restaurants on the list were good.

In retrospect, when pre-booking restaurant reservations with the extensive list that was given to us, it would have been nice to have a price range on the list ($, $$, $$$, $$$ for example) of restaurant options so that we did not have to go individually to each and every single website or reviews website to find out.   Some restaurants that we ended up choosing we learned were very, very expensive when we arrived there.   

When we ran into some scheduling conflicts during the trip, our agent was easily accessible to take a phone call to help us.

The small group tours were good, especially for skipping the line!  Very key in Florence to see the David and at the Vatican/Sistine Chapel.

We noticed that many of the costs were whited out and blocked from our viewing.  This is understandable from the travel company's business prospective to reduce exposure to their margins, however please be careful in the future because on one of our train tickets- the price was NOT whited out but the Conformation Code for the ticket was whited out.  Specifically, for the Train ride from Florence to Salerno the PNR code was whited out (instead of the price like was done on the other tickets) which caused the train conductor to have some confusion and was a little complicated to resolve when on board the train. 

Other than that, all transportation and private transportation that was booked of us was smooth.  Drivers arrived on time and were good, safe rides.

We loved our accommodation in Chianti accept the towns to visited we so far away and we would spend most of the day away from this lovely resort and felt that we did not get to spend much time on the resort itself to enjoy it. So not sure why we should stay at such an expensive resort to spend little time there.  Understandably, there are so many sites and things to see in Italy but we had planned too many things. In retrospect, we should have asked our coordinator to plan in more relaxation time. 

The restaurant in Florence, Il boro Tuscan Bistro was not good, at all.  All of the courses that we tried were not good for both of us and the service was not good. I would not recommend this restaurant to other travelers in the future.    

We generally found that the restaurants that we found on our own exploring the city, were cheaper and better food.