Florence Highlights Private Tour by Train from Rome

For our last full day in Italy we decided to visit Florence. I booked a 4 hour tour with Viator because I knew the lines for all the attractions would be long and I wanted to make the most of my short time in Florence. After booking the tour I booked tickets on the fast train to take my husband and I from Rome to Florence which cost a little more then $200 since it was short notice and we traveled on the business train. When we arrived in Florence I called our tour guide at 9:55am (meeting time was 10am), she told me she was double booked, said “sorry” and pretty much hung up. I called Viator who told me that they did not know what happened and that they would call her and they wanted me to call her again too. She apparently did not answer the phone when they called and she did not respond to my text when I sent her the confirmation information. My husband and I spent hours in Florence but the long lines hindered us from doing much, we were able to get into the academia gallery museum but that was the only museum we could get into due to the long lines. I would not recommend booking with this company. I couldn’t believe I travelled all the way from Rome to go to Florence only to get ditched by someone that was double booked. Viator did send an email around 10:30am saying they would cancel our trip since they could not get a hold of the tour guide, it was extremely disappointing. They did refund the money for the tour guide, but a big part of us traveling all the way to Florence was to have a tour of the town. We went on you tube and looked up self walking tours (the problem is you need to plan this in advance so that you can actually get into the museums/churches). While in Rome we booked multiple trips with Walks of Italy and they were excellent. They did have to reschedule one trip but they were able to take us on the trip another day. If you want to make sure you actually have a tour guide that can get you into multiple attractions quickly I would recommend you use Walks of Italy! I will never use Viator again after this terrible experience.