Semi-Private Tour: Day Trip to Florence and Pisa from Rome with Lunch included

This was an amazing trip. Florence was beautiful and the tour guide took us around and explained all the various sights along the way. There was plenty of time for pictures. The tower of Pisa was phenomenal. There was lots of time for some great pictures!! The lunch was fantastic. Our family of 4 is all vegetarian and they went out of their way to ensure we got a great meal too. We also squeezed in some shopping at the leather market next door which wasn't quite part of the tour. Very flexible tour guide and good value for your money.

If you are traveling with your family to Rome with very limited time and wish to see other parts of Italy's history, I definitely recommend this tour.

Didn't have any time to explore Florence. No art and no museums. Got to Pisa late it was ok but would have liked to see it in daylight. Thought lunch was included, but we paid for it.

The tour is great for people who have some prior knowledge of Florence and Pisa, but is otherwise boring for those who don't. The reason the tour takes so long is primarily due to the distance between Rome and Florence, but if there is no prior knowledge of Florence, you are better off just going to Pisa by itself.

My wife and I just returned from a trip to Rome. We went on many scheduled tours which we purchased through VIATOR. We did what we thought was careful research. Most of the tours were very good. This was a disaster from start to finish. Our tour guide Vittoria was completely disconnected from the four of us who were on this semi-private tour. The majority of the day was spent in a very worn out noisy van with no commentary about what we were seeing as we drove through Tuscany to Florence from Rome. Vittoria who acted as both tour guide and driver spent hours on her phone talking, thumbing through apps, and texting. Very, very dangerous. I considered finding an alternative way back to Rome, but since we paid such a large price for this tour 586.00 for two people, we endured her terrible driving. While we were in Florence she spent maybe 2 hours being a tour guide, but we did not have a chance to learn much. While in Pisa, she gave us 30 minutes to visit the tower and other surrounding sites, and then left us alone with ZERO commentary. I could go on and give more details, read some of the other recent reviews and you will see a similar pattern. In my opinion we wasted a day of our vacation 14.5 hours on this tour. My recommendation is to look elsewhere if you want to go on a day trip from Rome to Florence.

Although a lot of driving, there was adequate time to enjoy Florence and Pisa and take nice pictures.

When we found this tour, it seemed on the expensive side, and promised a very long day, but our guide Andrea made it a pleasure from beginning to end. The expense was justified based on the miles covered, as well as the very nice lunch in Florence, and of course the knowledge and patience of our guide. He even did some extras like helping on some leather-bag shopping in Florence and finding a special statue Fibonacci I wanted to see which was hidden away near the tower in Pisa. The expense was well worth it, allowing us to make the most of a spare day in Rome.

Overall, we had fantastic tours in Italy. This tour was awful. I spent 750 for this day, and it was terrible. First, I tried confirming our pickup time and location the day prior. The voucher only stated that we would be picked up 1 hour prior to the 7:30am departure time. I texted the contact number, emailed the tour guide, sent them a facebook message, but ultimately ended up contact Viator for assistance. I received a text at 5:30am on the day of the tour that our guide would pick us up at 7:15am. It is a 2 hour drive to Florence. Our tour guide, Vittoria, never spoke to us the whole drive. She had her headphones in, talking on the phone, the entire trip. She also texted several times while driving. When we arrived, she gave us a quick walk through the city. The restaurant we went to was a tourist trap restaurant with terrible service. When we finished eating, we started to wonder what the plan was next. I got up to find our guide, and she said, now is your free time until 2:30. It was already 2pm. We didn't realize we had spent most of our free time sitting at this terrible restaurant. We paid for a 3-4 person tour. There were actually 5 people total, plus the guide, meaning 6 of us were in the van. In Florence, we picked up someone else. Vittoria said it was another tour guide. So now we had even less space. In Pisa, we had 30 minutes, 15 of which we spent in line for a bathroom. Then, it's about a 3 hour drive home. It was a horrible way to experience two very beautiful cities. It would have been nice if she had talked to us on the drive, given us some history on the cities, anything. Added bonus, my friend accidentally left her cell phone in the car at the end of the day. It was a nightmare trying to get it back. It took two days. After scheduling three different times to meet us and not showing up, we called Viator to ask what to do. They told us to report the phone stolen. I texted Vittoria to let her know, and of course that resulted in us getting the phone back. She told my friend she would drop it off at 8:30am. My friend waited outside our Airbnb until 9:15am when she finally arrived. Unbelievable.

The tour itself was fine, though it didn't deliver all that was promised. This was supposed to be a semi-private tour with a guide, driver and tour escort. We only had a driver who also acted as the tour guide. Her name is Victoria. She did a good job, however, I think she was also the office manage and/or supervisor. I don't think they had enough people signed up for this, so they tried to change the date. In the end, Victoria ended up being the driver and guide. She was on the phone all the times we were driving and there was zero commentary about the countryside during our drive. albeit, the noise in the van would have made that difficult without a sound system - and our van did not have that. As it was, we ended up with a private tour since there were only the 4 in our family on the trip. It was a very long day, but it was the only way we could see both Pisa and Florence given our limited time in Italy. By the way, they selected a local restaurant in Florence for lunch. it suited us perfectly - not too expensive and really good food. The biggest issue was with the coordination. We got a call a couple of days before, asking if we could switch dates. We could not because we were only in Rome for 5 days and had other reserved tours. We did give them one day we could switch to, so the tour company RomaeTravel said they would get back to us. They never initiated another call. Because of the uncertainty created by the first call, we contacted them several times trying to get a firm commitment. We wanted something in writing or a voicemail message. Everything was verbal. Last contact before pickup said 7:00am at our hotel. So we were ready at 6:45am. We didn't get picked up until 8:20am! To be fair, there were road access issues in central Roma due to the Pope's travels. Viator's support was pretty much non-existent. A message sent on their website goes to a service center. We got an automated reply but no real work on our problem/concern. Viator who we have used many times is efficient when it works well. Don't expect great customer service if it doesn't. Interesting note in conclusion. They don't offer the Florence and Pisa trip any more or at least not during the end of October. My guess is that they didn't get enough people to do the trip the way it was advertised. Maybe canceling would have been better than the stressful lead up to the start of the tour.

There were 4 members in our family so we actually ended up having a private tour. Our guide was really great. Because it was just us, and 3 of us had been there before, she took us into the cathedral, and gave us extra shopping time at the market. Lunch was included and the restaurant that was chosen was a little busy but the food was excellent. We really liked the fact that we had plenty of options to choose from. We chose this tour mostly because my 15 year old niece had Pisa on her bucket list. She wasn't able to climb the Leaning Tower because the next available time slot was 1 1/2 hours later, but our guide offered to wait if that's what my niece really wanted to do. Instead my niece opted for shopping and the guide even gave the kids a chance to go to the nearby McDonald's. My only hesitation about the tour was our driver. He thought he was Mario Andretti , especiallly on the highways and gave us a couple of nerve wracking moments.